When it rains, it pours

Sometimes when you hear the phrase "When it rains, it pours" some people are talking figuratively. Well, in this case I'm talking quite literally. The past 2 months in Cedar it has rained nearly everyday and it rains quite heavily. Well, my parents have been needing their roof re roofed for quite sometime now. Their contractor came over this past week and started tearing off all the shingles, well, when he left for the night he didn't cover the roof with any kind of tarp or anything. And yes, you see where this story is going. It down poured all night long. My parents woke up at 4 in the morning to their entire house being completely soaked on the inside. Including (which has been the worst part for my mom) my moms $25,000 grand piano. It was filled with water. It's completely ruined. The water has spread to every room in their entire three story house except for the kitchen, the laundry room, and our basement. All other rooms have some sort of damage done to it. It's a HUGE mess. They are going to have to replace walls, carpets, the ceiling pillars, the piano, and the list goes on and on. It will probably be unlivable for 4-6 weeks while they try to get everything fixed. Possibly even longer. We have been going back and forth all week trying to help out and see what we can do. They had a lot of things ruined. Derek even spent one evening on the roof with my dad and the roofer trying to re roof the house before it started raining again and doing more damage to the inside of the house. Its been a crazy week. Here are a few pictures of the damage.

This picture doesn't do much justice because our piano guy put the piano back together (for the most part) but before this each individual key was taken out to dry and it was completely torn apart. Its playable but it doesn't sound that great. 

My parents have these huge fans all over the house trying to dry out the walls and carpets and everything. You kind of have to yell to be able to hear each other with all the fan noise going on. 

This is part of the upstairs they have started to rip apart because the dry wall was completely soaked. They have a huge humidifier in the rooms too to try and get some of the moister out. They are going to have to tear out several walls in our house. This is the beginning of it.

My parents have tried to stuff a lot of their furniture into some smaller bedrooms. My mom is going to be selling a lot of the furniture that is in here. Not because its ruined, but because they are just probably going to be remodeling a lot of things. 

There are spots all around the house where they have the carpet torn up or lifted up to dry it out. This is my old room. Its sad to see my house in such bad shape. 

You can't see very well in this picture, but these are the main ceilings as you walk into our house. They have water spots all down them and are pretty ruined. They are going to have to sand down all the wood pieces and re stain all of the wood. Its going to be a long process. 

I've been back to work for a couple weeks now, but tomorrow is the first day that my kids are coming so it should be a very busy and interesting week. I'm excited though. It will be fun.

Derek starts fall semester tomorrow as well. He has a really busy schedule ahead of him. I also start my online classes through USU this Tuesday and I hear it is a very demanding class so I'm a bit nervous. Other than that life is good and we are so blessed with all the things that come our way in our life. Until next week.

1 year down and eternity to go

Well, can you believe it? Its been one year since we got hitched! We were married August 20, 2011 and we have loved every moment of married life. Of course there are the disagreements and trying to get used to the other persons quirks but that's what it's all about and we just love being married to each other. We are each others best friends and I speak for both of us (because I know Derek would say the same) its been the best decision each of us has made. Well, to celebrate our big 1 year anniversary I surprised Derek with a few gifts when he got home from work Friday. He opened up several gifts with little things that we would be using that night to celebrate such as a dinner certificate to Tiki Grill, (love love love this place, please go if you haven't it's off Brigham Road exit in St. George and its one of our favorite places to go) hotel reservations at the Hilton Garden Inn, and a few other surprises. We headed off to St. George and had a great time. Here are a few pictures from the evening.

Derek opening his presents for our anniversary.

Right before we head off on our trip

This was our hotel room view...it was really nice. 

You can't really see a whole lot of detail in this picture though.

Us just being happy and having fun celebrating our anniversary.

The next day we got up and just took our time relaxing and getting ready for the day. We headed to the St. George temple and did some sealings which was great to hear those reminded words and promises that we heard one year ago when we ourselves were getting sealed to one another. 

Here we are in front of the temple. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed our celebration together. 

Oh yeah, me being the cool wife that I am got this for Derek for our anniversary. He has been wanting one badly and he promised me that he would sell his Nook if I did it. 

http://www.google.com/nexus/#/7

Yeah its a really fancy anniversary gift, but it makes him happy and maybe in the future in return he will get me a really awesome gift such as I have done for him (hint hint Derek when you read this.) :)

Technically its not our anniversary til tomorrow so we will be doing a little bit more celebrating then but since it was on a Monday and we both have work it was just easier and more enjoyable to do it on the weekend so that's why all the early gifts and trips and surprises and such. 

Happy Anniversary to Derek and Me! We are so happy and we can't wait to see what this next year of marriage brings. 

Short post, cute turtle

Hey-o, this is Derek. I'm going to be writing the blog post this week.

So this past week has been full. Bib's been working like crazy to get her classroom ready before her school starts. There's a lot of cleaning, organizing, painting, building, destroying, etc. to be done and I've spent a few extra evenings with her trying to help her out. She has been back to school full-time since Monday, and the first day of class with her new students is fast approaching (Aug. 27th, which is also my first day back in class).

I've just been working full-time at the college and mowing a few family member's lawns in the evenings. Pretty boring stuff. Hopefully next week will be more interesting. Here's a picture of a super tiny turtle:

Camp Outs, Logan, Laughs, and Life

Some of you regular readers of our blog (and there aren't many, but I know you are out there) you may notice I missed out on blogging last week and that was because I was on a long drive up to Logan (I'll explain soon). So lets rewind to two weeks ago and I will start there.......(rewind)........... okay here we are.

It was a pretty typical week with lots going on. Derek has been SO BUSY these past few weeks with work and mowing lawns and side jobs and just life in general that he has been on a tight schedule. He is supposed to be on summer break, but it seems he has just gotten busier. We took a break one evening though and had some friends over. A good friend of ours from high school, Krista (shout out to Krista if she sees this ever) was in town with her husband and we see them once every year if we are lucky and probably even longer than that at times. We wanted to get together with them and spend some time with them so we had a little get together at our house. Jens and Vonae Swensen and Pace and Amanda Clark also came (because we just can't party without them, their definitely some of our favorite party friends) and we had a lot of fun. We played card games and laughed and made the best (and I seriously mean BEST) Homemade Oreo Ice Cream Dessert that has ever come into this wonderful world of ours. It was a hit. And we had lots of fun and lots of laughs. 

Friday evening was our big Ward Campout at Yankee Meadows. We went up Friday evening and had a big yummy dutch oven dinner. Some people went home but most people stayed the night and we had a blast. We told jokes over the campfire and really enjoyed talking to everyone. Here are a few pictures from our trip (another quick shout out to Vonae for taking these pictures and sending them to me).

Waiting in line for food.

Everyone loved our big tent...so did we. Thanks Dave and Jeanne for lending it to us. 

Cleaning up to head home

Derek climbing a tree...I'm not sure why or what brought it on. 

We came home Saturday morning so that I could get back and do some projects and get me ready to go to Logan for the week. 

For those of you who don't know I am in a 3 year program of getting my masters through Utah State in Special Education for Early Childhood Education. I have one year done and two more to go. Part of the requirement for the 3 year program is that once a year (during the summer) there is a week long class/orientation/workshop that you have to go to and you get credit for it. So thats what I did. I got a really fancy 2013 Ford Taurus from the school district that was brand spankin' new and I drove it up to Logan on Sunday night so I could spend the week at this workshop. I stayed with some friends up there (Cassie for a few nights and then Cicely and McCabe the other nights...by the way here is another shout out to all of them for being awesome hosts and letting me sleep on their couch and floor.)

The classes were pretty intense and they were REALLY LONG DAYS! We had to be there at 8 AM and stay til 4 PM. Some of you may be thinking, hey that's nothing big thats what I work everyday. Well I thought that too. But then I realized that when I work I'm busy doing stuff and running around and time flies. Well, in this class it was all lectures all day non stop. We had short bathroom breaks and a lunch break but that was about it. It was so hard to stay awake in a hot room just sitting there for 8 hours listening to the same people lecture. However, I did learn a lot and it was very beneficial to me. I finished the class and got my credit and now I'm officially starting my second year into the program (which I hear is a lot more demanding than the first year, which is nerve wracking because I thought the first year was pretty intense). 

The week was going by especially slow because Derek wasn't able to come with me so we were apart from each other for 4 whole days! Which is the most we have been apart since we started dating. But on Thursday he was able to come up (and catch a ride with my cousin Kelli...shout out to Kelli for bringing up Derek with you) and be with me til Saturday when we headed home. Here is a picture of Kelli. We all love her. She's a favorite in our family and should be a favorite in your family as well. 

I was pretty sad that I wasn't smart enough to take more pictures of our trip but I did take a few. These are a few things we were able to do:

*Go to Gausner Cheese (its like the Disneyland of cheese...thats how Derek likes to explain it) and eat yummy ice cream, yummy cheese samples, and yummy flavored milk. This is Derek with the squeeky cheese we bought. So good. 

*Go to dinner at Firehouse Pizza with some of our great friends up there (Brian C., Kelli, Cic and McCabe, Bryan and Celeste, and Derek and I) the pizza there is so amazing! I ate there twice in the short week that I was in Logan because it was so dang good. I highly recommend it if you are headed up to Logan anytime soon. We got the Creamy Artichoke chicken and Bacon Pizza with salads. (I'm salivating just thinking of it)!

*Go to the Logan Zoo... I bet some of you didn't even know they had a zoo. But they do and it was fun going. Here are a few pictures from that that I was smart enough to take some pictures of.

Cic and McCabe in the back seat on our way to the zoo. :)

Entering the zoo.

The albino porcupine that was at the zoo (that was a big highlight). We also saw monkeys, a wallaby, elk, lots of birds, lots of turtles, ducks, bobcats, a raccoon, peacocks, etc. 

Derek and I in front of the duck pond. 

You can pay 10 cents and get a handful of duck food. Here Kelli and Derek are feeding the ducks. I love this picture. So posed.

We were able to spend a lot of fun times with great friends. I got a credit for a class. We got to ride a fun fancy car to Logan. And it was a great trip.

But wait, I'm not done. Friday night we traveled down to Syracuse and met up with Derek's cousin Max so that we could go on a double date with him and Kelli and Derek and I (we set them up). We all had a lot of fun and it was the hardest I had laughed for a long time. There was a lot of funny things said and great memories. We had time to pull a prank on Derek's other cousin Dan (Max's younger brother) and I don't think I will ever forget that. We also had a great meal at Chili's. After the date we traveled to SLC and stayed the night with my Uncle John and Aunt Jean. They live in an apartment building that is right above the Conference Center and its a pretty sweet view. We had fun visiting with them and spending that time with them even though it was short. 

We were so glad to be home and we were both exhausted. We slept in this morning as long as we wanted and it felt so great. It's been awhile since either of us were able to do that. That was a quick recap of  the past couple weeks in the Payne family. 

A few other quick happenings in the life of us:

*We both finished the registration process of Fall semester this week by paying our tuition for USU and SUU fall semester :( talk about a punch to the bank account. Tuition prices are ridiculous. It was about $4500 dollars for the both of us, but I'm glad we got that taken care of... in a sad way. 

*I go back to school tomorrow. My contract days don't start til next week but there are some RTI and IEP days that our school has to do before contract days start and they last all week this week. I can't believe the summer has flown by so fast and its already time to go back to school!

*I got to go school shopping and got some fun new clothes for school to start. It was nice to get some cute new clothes. I feel like its been awhile. It just makes a girls day to get new clothes. 

*Derek finished a big project for my brother that he was working on. He did a brochure for the Desert Hills High School. It turned out great. I have a cool husband that is really talented. 

*Our garden is hopeless. We have kind of given up on our garden that we were so looking forward to. All the plants were doing really well and they all grew to a certain point and then just died so quickly there wasn't anything we could even do. There are some good looking onions out there but that's about it.