Temple Visit

Last week we had such a great experience.  We had the opportunity to do the temple work for family members on my moms side of the family.  She has been working so hard on our family Genealogy and it has been such a blessing in the way that she is having GREAT success finding family members and information on them, she even has been contacted by 3 cousins of hers she never knew she had, IN FACT one of her cousins is flying from Kau'i to St. George this summer and my mom is driving down there to meet with her and pick up files and pictures her cousins has on family members. My mom and her cousins are talking to each other on the phone every day sharing information with each other. It's so exciting especially because these records were pretty much non existent for the longest time, my mom thought she would never be able progress with the work of her family.  My parents and Dillon and I took the names of a family of 12 to the temple where we were able to perform baptisms and confirmations.  Dillon and I did the baptisms for the family members and my dad baptized us then afterward my dad confirmed Dillon and Dillon confirmed me.  It was such a great experience to be able to perform these ordinances for our family members and especially with my husband and have him lay his hand on my head and perform the confirmation. The spirit was so strong we definitely felt the spirits of our family members and their happiness.

Valentines day

Dillon and I just love Holidays one of them being Valentines Day When I got up in the morning to get ready for work I hung up the candy letter/poster I made for Dillon on the wall for when he got up to leave for school then I headed out for good ol' work. Throughout the day at work I was sending Dillon texts building up the anticipation for our Valentines Day evening, Dillon had school in the morning but he didn't have to go to actual work because they paid for him and several others to go see Chronicles at the movies for the day (lucky duck) and get paid for it they even bought them gift cards to buy treats there at the theater. I'm so glad he was able to get the job at Wells Fargo it is so good for him and he loves it. After work I had class for a little bit but my teacher let us go home early with it being Valentines day.  When I got I was greeted by my sweetie with a huge hug and kisses and a spotless home, when I walked in to our bedroom he had it decorated so pretty and romantic and left me treats and a pot of a pink polka-dot plant on the bed, he is so incredibly created. I then did a "love hunt" (which is a scavenger hunt) for Dillon where he had to perform the task I wrote on one of the cards before he could read the clue.  The tasks that were on the card were, "take turns feeding each other chocolate dipped strawberries before reading the next clue" "Share with each other your favorite characteristic about each other" "share favorite memory with each other" "poor a glass of bubbly and take turns making a toast" "sweep your woman into your arms and dance to an entire romantic song before reading the next clue" and "kiss your woman like shes never been kissed before" the last clue led him back in to the bedroom where some surprises were awaiting him. Every Valentines day it is a tradition for us to make at home little pizzas so we had fun making pizzas and eating it with bubbly then for dessert we had refreshing Strawberry Shortcake then spent the rest of the night enjoying each other and the rest of our night.  Dillon is so sweet, I love that he loves celebrating Holidays and continuing/making new traditions.  He definitely is one of a kind, I'm so glad I found love and I get to keep him forever :)

Whatchu know about that red velvet cake?? mmm thanks mom!

Chelsey's day of birth!

Yippee! This past Friday I had turned 21 which is exciting because I got to renew my license and now Dillon and I are both legal adults! I don't know whether I should be happy or discouraged about this but for now I will be happy about it lol. I was born in Orem at 6:51 Pm on February 10th 1991! We love to celebrate with food so the day before my birthday we took our free meal birthday cards to Tucanos and enjoyed the fabulous brazillian grill. The next morning I woke up to a cute kitchen decorated in streamers and balloons and a yummy filling breakfast which consisted of orange juice, a berry parfait, crepes, and a breakfast sandwich. After breakfast Dillon painted my nails for my birthday before heading out for class. The whole day I was able to just lay in bed and relax all day which was nice.  When Dillon got home from class we went out to nickle city and played a bunch of arcade games in hopes to get lots of tickets to win the kinect but unfortunately we only were able to come home with a bunch of little toys for ourselves.  We also went to Brick Oven for their all you can eat pasta for dinner then went to a lounge here in Provo and got several drinks while we lounged around.  I had such a great day and was spoiled rotten by my sweet husband. That night Cody called us wanting to do something the next day so he came up to hang out with us.  When he got here I made shoyu chicken and pani popos for dinner then we went to the jump place right down the street from our house for a while but left because the old men bodies (Dillon and Cody) were falling apart first Codys hand then Dillons ankles lol. Then we went and got a giant 2 ft crepe which was delicious it was filled with lots of bananas, strawberries and nutella. We ended the night playing Mario on the WII and ate the valentine cupcakes I made.  Poor Cody was so tired he ended up just spending the night here at our place and woke up to an unpleasant surprise, lots and lots of snow fall.  It's always so fun to do things with family and since we are so busy we hardly get to do much with them so we enjoy when Cody comes to chill with us.  He may even come live with us during the summer until he starts school at BYU.  That will be fun to have Dillons brother closer to us. Which by the way WE CAN'T WAIT UNTIL SUMMER!

Dill Pickles Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR DILLLOOONN HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOO YOU!! woohoo! Yesterday February 1st Dillon turned the big 21! he is now officially officially a legal adult. Dillon is so funny, for several weeks before his birthday his excuse for eeeverything was "....It's almost my birthday" or "...because I'm alllmost the birthday boy". So the Sunday before his birthday my parents wanted to celebrate his birthday together as a family so when we went over that night for dinner they had decorated the kitchen and made the dinner Dillon loves and had requested which was Spanish rice with white sauce green chili enchiladas along with one of his favorite desserts which is my moms jello dessert (mmmm you can just inhale that dessert). My dad also made him a birthday crown.  Growing up every since we were little for every birthday my dad would make us a crown to wear so for Dillon's Birthday my dad made him one.  Unfortunately on Dillon's actual birthday we didn't do much because I had to work, at least the birthday boy didn't have to go in to work (however, he did have school that morning).  I had missed my class that evening so that I could go home and spend the rest of the evening with him.  When I got home I took him to "Roll up crepes" (we loove crepes) where I got a chicken spinach alfredo crepe and dillon got a bbq chicken with mozzarella cheese and pineapple crepe, boy where they yummy! We then played games on the wii as the dinner I made was cooking, he wanted me to make home made macaroni and cheese with meat loaf so I did.  Then afterwards I brought out his mamas infamous graham cracker cake which is Dillon's ultimate favorite which he inhaled....literally...when I say inhale he seriously inhales that sucker. After I played happy birthday for him on my flute (at his request) then he opened gifts.  He got the dvd Real steel from my brother and his wife, 2 pairs of dress pants for work, shoes and house slipper. However, due to the lack of celebrating on his birthday because I was gone all day at work we will do more celebrating tomorrow since we both have Friday off of work and school.

 

One of the top best sandwiches you've ever put in your mouth...

yes....the title of this post says it all...so today after church for lunch I made the two of us a panini that really is so delicious. We love pepper jack cheese in our subways so while we were at the store the other day I was like "Hey....why not buy some pepper jack cheese for paninis, yum?" so we bought some.  Yesterday Cody came up and spent the day with us, we took him to an archery place so we could practice our mad archery skills.  The competition got pretty intense between Dillon and Cody when we started keeping score. After archery we took Cody rock climbing at the Quarry and once again the whole time it was a competition between Dillon and Cody to see who could make it to the top of the most difficult walls the fastest and who can make it up the the furthest without using their legs, just arms, then they had to see who could boulder the hardest walls.  Then afterwards we came home and I made fajitas for dinner and then we had rootbeer floats while we played some mind games.  It was fun having Cody over.  But back to the awesome panini...I took the marinated chicken and vegetables I made for the fajitas yesterday put that into the sandwich as well as spread a pesto spread on the slices of bread (except on one slice of Dillons he wanted mustard) added spinach and pepper jack cheese then I placed it inside our panini maker and that is all it took...... cooked to perfection and to die for! all the flavors meshed sooooo nicely and it is a fiesta in our mouths! PAAAANINIS.....yuuummmmm!

Booted!

Today Dillon and I woke up to a lovely surprise awaiting for us....we woke up early, got ready for work, put our shoes on, grabbed all our things that we need for the day, gave each other a kiss goodbye, wished each other the best of luck today and "have a good day at work" as we hugged each other before heading out, we then opened the front door to head out to our cars and there we see it... BOTH OF OUR CARS BOOTED! (oh ps. same with 3 other people in our complex, and that's just the cars in which we saw, we dunno about all the others who leave at like 6am to go to work) I bet you are all thinking, "Whaaaaa? fo real???" yeah.... exactly what we were thinking. After much looking at the boots on our cars and back at each other plenty times in disbelief we go inside and call into work and inform them of the unfortunate event in which they were very understanding (at least my work was, the person Dillon talked to said, "uh...well you're the only lobby teller until noon..." BLAST! ugh..) Dillon notices that our parking passes had expired 5 days ago and we were never informed about the fact that we need to renew our passes annually for $10 per vehicle. NOT FAIR RIGHT? ya especially seeing as how we are new tenants here and we weren't informed, not anywhere! Anyways, Dillon gets on the phone with the "University Parking" the ones responsible for this outrage and tells them we need the boots off immediately seeing as how we both have 15 min to get to work.  The person on the phone then says, "Uh....yeah we won't be able to make it out to you for like...another half an hour or so, we are really busy today" YEAH! BUSY TAKING ALL THE BOOTS OFF THE CARS IN THE CITY OF PROVO!! ugh...at least we will now have time to eat breakfast.  We go back inside and eat and watch some TV and such then a little after a half an hour later we see the "de-booters" pull up and some neighbors come out to hurry and pay the dang guys so they can take the literally 2 seconds to pop the boot off their car so they can  hurry and head out to where ever their busy lives take them. So Dillon goes out and pays the bloody $50 for each boot totaling a wasted $100 and we hop into our cars and hurry off to work so we aren't later than we already were. I go straight to work and 10 min after I have been at work Dillon texts me and informs me that he has gone to the office of our apartment on the way to work and picked up new passes IN WHICH our landlord said she wasn't going to charge us for the new passes and she is going to refund us the $100 we had to pay this morning, BLESSED I TELL YA! So eventually it was resolved, I came home to see a letter on everyone's door only now informing us about the renewing the parking passes and come to find out we had until the 16th of January -_- late for work for nothin! so we carried out our day as normal and I also find out that my 3 hr class this evening has been cancelled.  wheew! the lord definitely is watching over us and helping us out every bit he can :)

Farewell 2011! and Hau'oli makahiki hou!

Wow, what a busy year this has been.  As I look back at everything that has happened this year I can't believe how fast the year has gone by. Here are a couple highlights from 2011..

Highlights:

• We got engaged!!! March 31st of this year
• We transferred from Utah State University to Utah Valley University
• Dad won 1st place in state in the Golds Gym weight loss challenge and 2nd place nationally.
• Cody got back from his Mission from South Carolina and is now going to school in SLC
• Brandee Graduated from High School and started up at UVU
• Ashley graduated from UVU in exercise science, moved to Seattle for a couple months and is now living in Hawaii where she is going to Nursing school for the next 5 years.
• Dustin & Dani were married June 24 in the Draper Temple
• Dillons niece Alessandra turned 1
• Dillon & I were married October 15 in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple
• We got settled into our first apartment in Provo, Utah
• I officially and legally changed my name from Chelsey Akana to Chelsey Swanson
  
• Dillon got a job at Wells Fargo
• I got a job at Xlear inc.
  
• We finished up this school year pretty well both getting a good GPA this semester
  
• We went to Mesa, Colorado for our honeymoon where we went snowmobiling, cross country skiing and snowboarding, SUPER FUN!
• We had our first Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas together as a married couple

As far as both of us can remember, that is about all the main highlights from this year.  Our year consisted mostly of planning our wedding and getting our post wedding life put together as well as Dillon constantly working and attending school summer semester. We cannot wait to start this new year, this year is going to be so much fun! so far we have been married 2 and a half months and it has been total bliss.  We have set some goals for ourselves for 2012 and are ready to ring in the new year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I made nutella and apple pie filled Ebelskivers!