2015 Memories

This past year was a whirlwind. It went by quickly and because I'm a terrible recorder of my life I naturally went to my facebook to see all of my posts. 2015 was truly a great year for me. I'm the kind of person that is always looking to improve and learn. I definitely didn't fulfill my new year's resolutions from last year, but I feel that I started taking steps in the right direction. I have been blessed with so much. I need to complain less. I have grown closer to my family. I am more in love with my spouse. Caleb and I have everything we need to live plus more. Our lives are definitely not perfect, and we have our struggles, but our blessings have always outweighed our challenges and I need to keep remembering that. Here are some of my favorite memories from the year:

Recent Shenanigans

I love how I said at the end of my last post I would write about our Christmas, and then I dropped off the face of the planet. Well, that's how my journal looks like. I've been so busy I don't know what to do with myself! Well, let's get caught up, shall we?

Christmas happened. It was awesome. You can see pics from the last post. I ate a lot. And relaxed a lot. It was wonderful. I laid by the fire. I read a book. I got to spend time with Caleb. Caleb got to relax from school. Christmas is great as always.

We spent New Year's Eve back home in Michigan. Our neighbors invited us over for fondue. This was the first time I had ever had cheese and chocolate fondue in a home setting. It was mind-blowingly awesome.

the best decision I ever made

Caleb is by far the best choice I ever made. I am grateful to be married to him. He is the perfect person for me. Pretty sure I've said that a billion times. maybe two billion. :) You can learn more about him on my Bio page. Anyway, we celebrated his birthday the day I got back from my trip. We kept it pretty chill. I invited friends to the park for a game of ultimate frisbee and birthday cake (but not really cake, because Caleb doesn't like cake). I only took one picture of him on his birthday, here it is:

Those are his hands. :) I wish I took a picture of the fruit tart before we started cutting it. This was my first time making it. It was pretty easy. If you want to impress people, just make one of these and arrange the fruit nicely. I won't share this recipe though because I want to find a better one. But anyway, this is really called a fruit pizza, but I put it in a shallow pie dish so then it became a fruit tart.  Fruit tart sounds way more sophisticated than fruit pizza, don't you think? If you're thinking that I was smart for making that change, well, hate to bust your bubble but I'm not that smart. haha. Even though I wasn't a big fan of the crust, everyone told me it was very good. 

Here's a pic I took of Caleb the day after his birthday:

He got this t-shirt as a birthday gift from Josh and Shannon. If you can't read it, it says, "Never trust an atom, they make up everything." Pretty sure I made a valentine for Caleb that said the same thing. Doesn't he look great?

So you all must be wondering what I gave Caleb for his birthday. Well, I thought long, and I mean very very long, about a gift. I had some ideas, but I kept going back to this one gift idea that well, made me hesitant, and yet I knew he would have so much fun with it. In the end, I bought it for him, even though it goes against my very nature. I bought him a computer game. hahaha! I really don't like anything to do with video games or computer games because I feel like the majority of them are time-wasters. However, I do understand that people need to have some gaming fun once in a while. It just gets problematic when they spend too much time...I'm sure you have seen how easy it can be to get sucked into a video game. However, the game I bought for him is somewhat educational and you need to use physics to do well in the game. HOW NERDY CAN I GET? Well, I guess I'm not the real nerd here. The game I bought him is called Kerbal Space Program. It was created in collaboration with NASA. You basically need to design and launch a spaceship into orbit and plan your trajectories to ensure you will fall into the right gravity wells (what's a gravity well? dunno, that's just what Caleb told me) so that you can explore whatever asteroid/moon you need to reach, get data, and take it back to earth. You still with me? I'm not. Pretty nerdy stuff in my opinion. You're basically planning space missions. And I was right, Caleb is totally loving the game right now. He is definitely sucked in. At least I can feel somewhat good about it since he has to use his brain. :)

Overall, I think he really enjoyed his birthday. His parents took him golfing and to a Michigan football game at the Big House a couple days earlier. So he definitely had some fun, and our neighbors even had him over and sang him happy birthday!

Fall is here! I think Caleb's birthday was officially the first day of fall. We are blessed to have a beautiful maple across the street from our house. I love the changing colors.  

Happy Fall!

~Jessie~

hitting lots of birds with one stone

So I just got back from another trip. Yeah, I know, I keep going on all these trips. This year has just been an exciting year for people close to me. I went to San Diego for a wedding reception of one of my best friends since 5th grade. It was quite the event. I wasn't planning on going, but then when I found out our other best friend from 5th grade was going, I reconsidered. It has been years since we have been together, so I figured what better reason to get together than a wedding? It will probably be another long while until we are reunited again.

Dawn befriended me in 5th grade. She was a new girl. And she invited me over all the time. She lived just down the street from me.

I got these old photos from facebook. She somehow found them and posted them years ago. 

It was the beginning of an awesome relationship. Pretty sure this is 5th or 6th grade. I wish I had one of Mariana too, but you'll see her in a second. 

ben and whit 2014

Over the weekend, Caleb and I went to Utah for a much anticipated wedding. Ben and Whitney were married on August 14, 2014 in the Salt Lake Temple. It was a beautiful ceremony. Everything was perfect. Before the wedding day, we went around visiting friends and relatives. It was a really busy day, and we were very exhausted, but it was worth every minute. I was grateful to see so many old friends. And a big shout out to my friend Allison for being so loving! I love you Lew Lew! I was also glad to see Ben, even if it was for a little bit, he seemed to be pretty calm and relaxed. I know he'll rock this whole marriage thing. :)

The wedding day went perfectly. We rode with Josh, Shannon, and Phoenix and had time to spare before the actual temple ceremony. With our extra time, we went to the temple square visitor center and saw the famous Christus statue. It was so peaceful. I just stood there looking up at the statue for a few silent moments, and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude for my knowledge of the Savior and His love for me. I am so grateful for the faith I have in Him. Because of Him, I've had the strength to do hard things and to change for the better. 

Caleb, Will You Be My Valentine?

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope your day is going well. Yesterday I made a simple gift for Caleb. Took me forever, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. I've started to pick up calligraphy, so I wrote the only font I know so far, italics. The ink was pretty light though so  I took a pilot pen afterwards to darken the letters. I hid them in his pillowcase last night, and he discovered them this morning. It was a fun morning. 

Christmas and January 2013 Adventures

  First of all, I hope everyone had a great holiday. Our Christmas vacation was amazing! We went to Ohio to spend Christmas with Caleb's family. Mom and Dad took all of us to see "Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat" at a local theater and the new Les Miserables movie on Christmas day. We had a family craft where each of us created our own sweatshirt design. Mom and Dad also spoiled us with way too many gifts, but we are very very grateful for their generosity. Here are some photos from our trip.

January has been a good month for us this year. Caleb has finished all of his grad school applications and so we are waiting to hear back from them. I'm working part time and just enjoying life with Caleb, the most perfect person for me. Caleb took me to the Y Ball at BYU and this is how he asked me:

Inside was a letter asking me to go to the Y Ball 

And so of course I say yes. We had a really good time. The dance was only for engaged/married couples, so it was a very love-filled event. They had some stations to take pictures. We are such a photogenic couple. :)

I've also made the goal of choosing recipes to follow for dinners instead of just making something up on the fly. It's been really fun, sorry the photos are terrible, but I can assure you it tasted like you were at a five star restaurant.

Pizza recipe from Costco book

Happy husband with lemon chicken and green beans

We also just went last night to see the BYU production of The Phantom of the Opera and it was outstanding!! It was worth every penny. We bought our tickets super early in December and apparently every show sold out by the end of the month.  I'm so grateful that Caleb did some very good planning on his part. Neither of us are very good at planning dates. 

Also, for my mother's birthday, the Tang clan made a special family photo. Happy Birthday Mom!

I'm very excited for February...Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day!

I love my Life I love my Wife

We had a really busy and fun last couple of days. Friday night we went to lagoon for Jessica's work party and rode some roller coasters. Saturday we rafted down the Provo river with my physics research group, had stake conference, and then watched the BYU Utah game at Ben's apartment (sad ending, but fun night). Today we had the second half of stake conference and a birthday celebration hot pot for Ammon Lau. It was really fun to get to do so many different things with my beautiful wife. It doesn't matter where we go, she's always the prettiest girl there. School has been going well, work has been going well, and life is just flat out being good to me. Mostly it comes down to Jessica. I am so blessed to have her with me. I love my wife and I love my life!

This is Jessica now. We didn't take too many pictures, but here are some from the weekend. Sorry they are poor quality, my phone is not the best camera.

Our mission buddy Ammon at his birthday celebration

Clara, Ammon's newborn niece, we are both friends with her parents

Caleb holding Clara

She Walks in Beauty

Hello Everyone! We are very excited to announce the creation of our new blog: daysingoodness.blogspot.com. The primary purpose of this blog is to clue you in on what's been happening with our little family of two. We hope you become avid readers.

We do not wish to make daily or even lengthy posts, but we will most certainly strive to always include photos, since we both love photography. And who doesn't love to look at pictures anyway?

However, we would like to begin with a poem:

"She Walks in Beauty" By George Gordon Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

This is one of Caleb's favorite poems. He even memorized it so that one day he could say it to his future wife. moi. I am so blessed to be that person. The title of our blog comes from this romantic poem. If you don't know already, Caleb is a huge romantic, and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. So our plan is to "tell of days in goodness spent" because no matter what happens, everyday is filled with goodness. You just need to look for it.