My main man turned 25 this past week so of course we had to have a few birthday celebrations. One of the main events was that we got our new piano. It was suppose to come closer to his actual birthday but it arrived a week early. It is so fun to have music in our home and to just go over a relax for a moment when we need a little music in our lives. I am glad we both play the piano and hope we can take advantage of the music in our lives.
On his actual birthday I was going to be babysitting all day so he had to make his own birthday dinner of firecracker chicken. It might have been a good thing though because he was able to add a little extra spice. It was delicious and addicting. Yum. After dinner we opened a few gifts. He got a lot of money for the piano since we said it was the ONLY present we wanted for Christmas/Birthdays! I got him a nice zip up jacket that will hopefully keep him warm since some cold days are ahead. I also got him the book The Alchemist to add to our collection. Our book collection is small now but it just keeps growing. I went ahead and made some bread pudding while he watched jeopardy and took a few phone calls. Since Daniel does not love cake he decided he wanted a different dessert. So chocolate bread pudding was the choice. Oh my goodness it was decadent! Way better than cake! It was very easy to make as well.

Hey Daniel,
Happy 25th birthday. I am so glad I have been able to spend parts of year 22, all of 23, and 24 with you. I can't wait to see what 25 has in store! I hope it is the best year yet with lots of really great times together. I hope your dreams and wishes come true for you this year. I hope our dreams and wishes come true. I hope we have a lot of great experiences. I feel like we will. I have no doubt that we can create a wonderful year for ourselves wherever we are and whatever we are doing. I don't really know what I can say besides the fact that I am just so happy to be with you. I love you. I love who I am when I am with you and because of you. I love the growth. I love the adventure. I love the happiness we have had together. You are the best!
Love, Mallory

One day a few weeks ago I was lying on our bed while Daniel was doing some homework/work stuff at his computer. Out of the blue he turns around and says "I have kind of a random question for you." I was intrigued and told him to go on. He continued by asking if I wanted to go to a Josh Groban concert in a few weeks? I didn't really know how to respond since it was so out of nowhere. I said sure and he bought our tickets right then and there. There was a Groupon special so we thought it would be worth it. We really didn't talk about it, and it didn't seem very real, even when we were getting ready to leave. It was at the Consol Energy Center where the penguins play so it was pretty cold when we got there. The opening act was alright but we were ready for the man himself to come out. Oh man when he did there was just the excitement and energy in the crowd and on stage and it was a great concert. I am not super familiar with all of his songs so it was fun to be introduced. I love his new song "Brave" so it was fun to see that live. He really does have an incredible voice. So we had a great time. We cheered him for one encore and then cheered him even more for a second. He said he is often asked a lot of random questions and one that he does not have a hard time answering is what his favorite song is (which I found surprising). He then proceeded to sing Charlie Chaplins song "Smile." I love that song and hearing him sing it was beautiful!

Halloween is a fun holiday but for the most part at this point in our lives the day is fairly normal and could easily slip by without a second thought. We are not really the kind of people to dress up and party, but we still like to celebrate. Ward halloween parties are fun, and this year was especially good since it is our first time in a family ward since forever. It was fun to see all the kids dress up and to do some trunk or treating with them (I am surprised how many adults came by for candy too...).
On Halloween night Daniel was in charge of making the Chipotle Chocolate Chili since I would be babysitting kind of late. He has had a few cooking setbacks recently but I assured him he could do it. He got out the whole line up of food and got to work.
When I got home it smelled so yummy and it turned out perfectly. I had made cornbread earlier in the day so we enjoyed some pretty traditional Halloween/Fall food.
That night I wanted to watch a Halloween-ish movie, but not really a scary movie. We decided to keep it simple and look on Amazon Prime to see if anything was available. I found "Are You Afraid of the Dark" and decided we needed to take it back to our childhood and watch an episode. I remember when this T.V. show came on I could hardly make it through the opening scene and theme song without being scared out of my mind. I always turned it off about 2 minutes in. It was mostly cheesy and not scary but there was one part that made us both jump so I thought it was a Halloween success. Then we watched "The Witches" a movie based off the Roald Dahl book. It was weird but I think it satisfied the Halloween night movie as well.

A couple of weekends ago we took a little adventure to our nations capital. Our stake had a temple trip planned for Saturday so we were excited to attend. Daniel ended up finishing his first half of the semester and after a week of finals and midterms we realized he really did not have any homework or school on Friday or over the weekend. We took advantage of the extra day and headed to D.C. on Friday morning. On Friday we planned to be in a city that had a Cafe Rio around lunchtime, we are definitely missing that treasure out West. After a great lunch we continued to D.C. we got there and had planned to go see some of the monuments at the national mall. After driving around for a while looking for parking and getting lost and having no idea how the streets work in the D.C. area we finally found a great parking place. We went to all of the monuments and had a great time learning and talking about our nations incredible history. My favorite was the Lincoln Memorial, it is just so classic.
On Saturday we got to do a session in the D.C. temple with members of our stake. I was able to meet such a nice lady and talk to her before the session started. When we were leaving the temple we kept running into her at various places in the temple which was funny. When we got out of the temple we wanted a picture by the temple but we couldn't quite get it on our own. She was right behind us asking if we wanted a picture. We gave her our phone but she wasn't quite sure how to use it. A few seconds later she asked us to check because she didn't think it was taking pictures. We looked at our phone and there were 14 pictures. She just couldn't tell that the phone was taking a picture every time she tapped the button on the screen so she just kept hitting it. It was pretty funny.
It was such a nice little get away. It was a beautiful drive, fall was in the air, the government reopened just in time, and the temple was peaceful. Oh and I got to spend all weekend with Daniel, it doesn't get better than that!