Holiday Decor, in case you were curious

For Christmas this year, I started looking through Grandpa's basement to see what decorations he had. Jackpot! Here follows some of my favorite finds:
I LOVE nutcrackers. They look so sharp in their colorful uniforms and even though I know most nutcrackers' aren't meant to actually crack walnuts, I always like to open and close the jaw. Grandpa had several very good dolls, and they were some of the first things I put up. Dave's mom actually gave us a nutcracker this year, and I'm excited to put it up next Christmas!
You can also see a Santa Clause in this picture. I found a LOT of Santas. More pictures of them to come.
I was going to put up my nativity set that I got in Bethlehem last summer, but it was in Idaho when I was decorating and I found this white one in the basement and put it up instead. Grandpa made the reindeer on the sides, and he was excited to see them.Oh Christmas Tree! Grandpa kept telling Dave and me that he might have a Christmas tree in his garage. We found it in a huge cardboard box and pulled it down. I think the tree is a few decades old, as are the ornaments--I found the ornaments and skirt in the basement, as well as the lights, but everything still worked and the tree turned out really pretty. I liked that it was so old.
And here are two more Santas! There are at least two or three other Santas that I didn't include on the blog, but these ones were special. You could plug them in and they would move and light up.

Heather's Birthday

Heather and I are coming up on are one year anniversary, and Heather just celebrated her 22nd birthday. I still remember talking to Heather for the first time in the Freshman Academy office well over 2 years ago. We have had so many positive experiences togethere since then and things only seem to get better.

I feel lucky to come home to such an amazing person everyday after school. She has been a huge support to me during the first semester of school, and I'm sure that I wouldn't have been able to do as well without her support.

One of the things I noticed first about Heather is how much I enjoyed spending time with her. She is always fun to be around and always seems to see the bright side of life. She is easily the most important person in my life, and I can't imagine my life without her. Thinking that we have only been together one year makes me that we have so much to look forward too.

For her birthday we had a celebration here at the house and and celebrated with our families. Some of the pictures of what we did are below.

Thanksgiving / November

So I always complain that Thanksgiving gets overlooked, mushed between Halloween and Christmas. But I guess we're guilty of doing that this year with our blog--oops!

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. Dave and I had a great break from school, first going to Idaho and spending time with my family and grandparents, then spending Thanksgiving and part of the weekend with Dave's family in Salt Lake. The above picture is Friday night--we went to the Gateway and listened to Jon Schmidt welcome Christmas, enjoyed the lights and went shopping.


The other fun thing we did this November was go to a Jazz game! Woohoo! You can see from the lower picture that we had pretty good seats. By coincidence, my brother Greg also happened to be at that same game, and we got to see him for a few minutes.

Things Heather is thankful for:
1. Dave
2. Our families
3. Gospel (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), especially the rededication of the Mexico City temple. Dave got to be an usher at our stake church house and I attended, too--the broadcast was in Spanish and it was a really great experience. I'm also thankful for Elder Wirthlin and his life and teachings. He will be missed.
4. BYU, and that I graduate in April!
5. Redbox -- movies for $1 a night :) This past break, we watched two--Stardust and Get Smart. Good picks.
6. My health
7. AMERICA. On November fourth, I got to work at a voting place in Salt Lake. It was such a good experience--I loved seeing so many people, in so many stages of life and from different backgrounds come in to vote. I am much more dedicated to voting in the future after seeing others come in when it was so inconvenient for them with family situations, health, or language differences. I'm looking forward to see what happens with Obama as president.
8. My friends. I have been so lucky to have such great friends through school, good roommates, and wards, and that Dave has such good friends.
9. Good food --Thanksgiving was splendid. I think a new favorite kind of pie with me is soda cracker pie. I had it for the first time and loved it.

This is Halloween Everybody make a Scene

Happy Halloween! Halloween has got to be one of my favorite holidays, if not the favorite. Dave and I were talking a few days ago how fast time has gone since last Halloween. We weren't even engaged then!

On Halloween, I went to South Salt Lake's senior center with Grandpa and Michelle for pancakes. I also watched The Nightmare Before Christmas (my favorite Halloween movie) and that night, Dave and I went to a Halloween party with some friends. Ever done a murder mystery dinner? It was both of our first time, and we liked it a lot.

Annie, our hostess, made a great dinner. I thought the main dish was perfect for Halloween--it's a rice and beef dish cooked inside a pumpkin for an hour in the oven. I need the recipe because I want to make it next year.

Here is a close up of our costumes. Dave was an (ex)butler (he was fired for stealing), and I was an artist (the dead man's fiance, in fact). Do you like Dave's bowtie? I made it out of cardboard and spray paint I found in Grandpa's basement that is probably a decade old.

Some other fun stuff we did for Halloween--I went to Gardener Village with my Mom:

It was fun to see so many people dressed up like witches there. I want to do that one year. Item of Interest!!!: If you like Gardener Village, go to their website and tell them when you have a birthday. You can eat at their delicious resteraunt with a friend or spouse and get one meal free. They also always decorate the village really darling for the holidays. I'd like to go there for my birthday dinner and get enjoy all their Christmas decorations.

We also carved pumpkins for FHE on Monday. Here is Dave carving his:

We put candles on them on our front porch. In my family, we always have a tradition of making the same face as your pumpkin and taking a picture, but my picture is not very attractive (so you can imagine my pumpkin was a real ghoul) so I'm not posting it, haha.

On Saturday night, we had a Halloween party Part II with all the Yates! We did a mummy wrap, a Halloween recipe invention, ate donuts off a string without hands, and musical chairs. This isn't the best picture, but we did get some good videos of the musical chairs and donut eating. I'll try to see if I can post some later.

I think the best costume award goes to Michelle with her inflatable horse!

BYU Homecoming

After Dave's crazy test week (which went pretty good) we decided to spend our weekend in Provo and celebrate BYU's Homecoming!

Friday night we went to the BYU married student dinner, where we got served a nice dinner, had a program by Mindy Gledhill (so talented), and a show by ComedySportz (I was crying laughing so hard). We spent the night in Provo (thanks Jessica and Zac!) and the next morning, got free blue pancakes and watched the parade . . . even though it was real cold and was snowing. Funny story--the grill for our pancakes was low on propane, and they had a hard time cooking our pancakes--David's were pretty runny so he didn't really eat his. But we did get some yummy hot chocolate from the nearby gas station. The parade was great, and we got quite a bit of candy even though we were competing with some pretty agressive 4 year olds.


On Saturday, we visited some friends and Dave's sister Steph, and went to the BYU football game! We had wanted to go really bad, but we didn't have tickets, and at the last minute, our sister-in-law Becky called and asked if we wanted tickets--so we did get to go to the game! A big Thank You goes to Becky for getting us great, row-two tickets with seats instead of aluminum benches which were really nice when it is sooo cold.

You can see from the picture we had great seats and I was freeeeeezing.
Anyway, we had a great time and it was fun just to walk through campus and see the Y on the mountain lit up.

Steph's birthday is today! Here is the happy birthday girl with her yummy chocolate birthday cake. You're the best, Steph!

Anniversary!

So it's not actually our one-year anniversary yet, just our 9 month. (October 2nd) But we still went out to celebrate! We went out to eat at Cafe Rio, because we had enough stamps to get one meal free :) Here is a picture of us with Dave's Grandpa, Theron, as we were heading out the door to eat.

This week, Dave has another killer testing week--five tests and a quiz in five days. He has been getting ready for this week for a while, so hopefully things will turn out well.

During the afternoon session of conference, I made gingerbread Halloween cookies. Michelle Yates (Dave's sister) gave me the idea. When all the men went to the Preisthood session on Saturday night, all the girls got together and hung out for the evening. We made pumpkin cupcakes, among other things, and Michelle was showing me some Halloween cookies that you can make with gingerbread cut-outs and dough; I loved the idea. I went ahead and frosted some pumpkins, ghosts, Frankensteins, and mummies.

Wasn't conference great? I thought a lot of the messages were very timely considering all that has been happening lately.

A few weeks ago, I went to Idaho to start gathering materials for my senior project at BYU--I'm going to do a folklore/historical multi-genre collection of experiences my Grandma and Grandpa Harper have had with cattle, ranching, and farming. Here we are eating at the Outpost Steakhouse in Almo, Idaho. I split a 12 oz. Black Angus steak with my grandma--yum!

September weekend

This past weekend was fun, and kinda busy. I drove to Idaho to be able to see my cousin, Aubry get married at the Twin Falls temple. I wish I had a picture of her, because she looked beautiful, but I videotaped the wedding instead of taking pictures. Maybe I can put up a video sometime. Here is a picture of me, my sister Maris, and my parents at her luncheon afterwards.

When I got back to UT, David and I went to his cousin Mandy's ward for her daughter Olivia's baby blessing. Here is David with Olivia. She is soooo pretty. Dave loves holding babies--in our last married-student ward in Provo, all the moms in the ward asked Dave if he wanted to hold her baby, because he always asked and they all thought it was cute.

AAAAND I just had to post this, because I am way excited for Halloween. It is my nephew Ike in his tiger costume (I don't think Maris was going to end up keeping it--it was a little too snug). He didn't like it too much.

But we thought it was pretty funny.