Two Very Important Dates!

This is a picture from Daniel's ice-fishing trip. This is the white bass he caught!

There are many important dates in my life. Such as Maya's birthday, our wedding anniversary etc. This past week Two very important dates have come and gone. The first date was Sunday January 28, 2007, Daniel's birthday. That's right, he turned 26 this past weekend. We celebrated on Saturday by taking him to the BYU-Air Force game at the Marriot Center. Then I made dinner for everyone at our place and ended with cake and ice-cream, of course. I was just thinking about how important to me this date was. I mean, Daniel was born on this day. This is going to sound pretty funny, but thanks to his mom and dad, I was able to meet and marry the most wonderful and silly guy in the whole world!

The second very important date was Monday January 29, 2007. My mom and dad celebrated their "silver" anniversary (25 years!). I can't believe it has been that long, but I am so proud and happy for them. Some of you may not know, but just a couple of years ago, my parents had their marriage blessed by the Catholic Church. It was something they had wanted to do, but just didn't get to it. I was very happy for them because that was something I had wanted for them since the time I knew that it was important to have your marriage through the Church. Now they can fully participate in the worship and they have grown closer as a couple. This date is very important. Again, this is going to sound silly, but I wouldn't be here if they hadn't gotten married. I am thankful for them and I love them!

Now with all those cheesy shout-outs out of the way, I ran into this Far Side comic. I thought it was interesting in light of the philosophy of religion class I had last semester. I wanted to post this up and see what you all think. Does God have specific and exhaustive foreknowledge? And how do we reconcile that with human free will? Tell me what you guys think!

Workouts and Cold Ice

So, I just finished a week of some intense butt-kicking. Before the semester started, I signed up for an aerobics class (non-credit, open to public) offered by BYU. This of course to do some justice to the New Year's resolutions we all make, but never keep. For all of you who know me, I am not really an early bird, but I wake up at *gasp* 4:50 am to make it to my 6 am class. Now, there really is hope in this world. :) It is pretty intense, we do a combination of different aerobic routines such as kickboxing, dance, step, etc. and we also mix in circuit training, pilates, and weight training. I am pretty proud of myself. I also feel a lot happier and surprisingly, I have a lot more energy to deal with my other personal trainer, Maya. I would highly recommend doing some physical activity to all of my family and friends out there (baby, or not). Seriously, it really does wonders when you are active.

This past Saturday, Daniel got to go ice-fishing with a friend from work. They both headed out early Saturday and met at Utah lake to do some male-bonding over cold ice. Daniel is an avid fisherman, so when he heard that people were catching fish out there by the bucket fulls, he just couldn't contain himself. They spent the whole morning and early afternoon fishing for white bass (7am-2:30pm). He got some pictures, but when you have to use a camera that still requires you to go get the pics developed before you can even see them, it makes it really hard to get pics on our blog for you to see fast enough. Oh well, I will get them up at a later post. Daniel told me that the ice was 12in. thick and it was pretty cold out there on the lake. He caught an impresssive 13 1/4" white bass, unfortunately the fish were all fished out, cause that was it. A guy fishing by them gave Daniel the three that he caught, so Daniel came home with four great fish. Way to go, honey! We saved one for my fish-loving mom, and the other three we ate for dinner that night. It was great!

I think some explanations are in hand for the little comic and fish pics attached to this post. The comic comes from Toothpaste for Dinner a great online comic I found. I am going to try and add the link to our blog so you can check it out for yourself. They are all pretty clean, some comics can get a little crude, so watch out! Anyways, when I saw this comic it reminded me of how sensitive women get about their bodies. All I have to say is be glad that you are not grape-shaped. Ha! The fish, more specifically, a white bass, is not our own picture, I got it off the web so that you guys could see how cool and beautiful white bass are. The one with the osprey catching a white bass is on there because, well, it was cool.

Awesome Opportunities!

So the semester has started and we are back into the daily grind. Daniel has a full schedule of math (yuck...) and economics. I am taking a couple of classes, one to finish my degree. So far things are going ok. There hasn't been any major accidents and we are all intact. So, we are doing pretty good.

I have a really cool class that I just have to tell about. The final capstone class of the editing major is Editing for Publication. In this class we become real interns for BYU Studies, a real publication of Brigham Young University. Our class is rather small so we work as an editing team. We are in charge of a book that is going to be published. Each member of the team is in charge of an article that was written and presented at an earlier conference about belief and meaning in religious art (right up my alley!). The cool thing is that we act as real editors, not just practicing editors, but real ones. We have to get in contact with the author, write official letters, do detailed source checking, and make decisions on the overall design of the book's layout! I even had to sign a confidentiality contract promising not to share anything of what I am editing (sorry guys). But on top of it all we get our name in the masthead of the book and we get a free copy of it! I'm thinking that this is going to be great to show to future employers.....

Here it is! The long awaited blog site for the Dowlers. This is my first official post (some patience please) and I think some introductions are at hand. My accomplice in crime, and blissful wedding life, is Daniel Dowler. He is currently attending Brigham Young University (Go Cougars!) majoring in International Relations with an emphasis in political economy and minoring in Math...phew! He loves long walks....no really, more like long hikes, fishing, and playing sports. He's from New Mexico so he loves that green chile and he's the bestest friend a girl could have.

Next is little miss Maya, a.k.a. the Munch. She is 20 months old and loves to read and eat. She is majoring in the Terrible Two's and minoring in Toddler Cuteness and she really is the "cute one."

Finally, last, but not least, the author of this new blog site (me) Marquita. I am also attending Brigham Young University majoring in Linguistics and minoring in Editing. Now with that said, I know some of you readers will probably read through my posts just picking out grammatical mistakes and errors in puncuation just because I am minoring in editing. Minoring, not majoring....:) But, feel free to comment on any issues you deem necessary, even if they include my obsessive use of comma splices (let's just see you try). My interests include religion (theology, world religions, history), archaelogical stuff, print publishing, cooking, and learning Korean. My job titles would include mom, student, chef extraordinaire, and a searcher of truth.

Now with introductions out of the way, I think we should explain the purpose of this blog. We really hope that we can keep in touch with our friends and family all over the country and the world. We hope that we can share a little piece of our lives and the love we have for this life and our Savior with everyone. I hope to make you smile, make you think, and get some much needed therapy with writing what's on my mind and what's happening to our family.

Enjoy!