Thanksgiving, Christmas Time and Much Much More

A lot has happened the past few weeks ... yes its been a few weeks since I've posted anything on here... and I'm sorry. So we are just going to rewind a little bit and take us all back to our Thanksgiving break. We spent the Thanksgiving break going back and forth between spending time with my family and Derek's family. It was our turn with Derek's family for Thanksgiving though so actual Thanksgiving day was spent there. It was yummy. We had a lot of great food and had a lot of fun just relaxing and chilling with family. Everyone in Derek's family was able to be there (except Alan obviously because he is on his mission) but here are a few pictures from that night that we took.

We spent an entire day in St. George with my family. We went down and the ladies went to Santa's Workshop craft fair while the men went with the kids to Defy Gravity. A ginormous bounce house with floors and walls covered with trampolines and blow up toys. The kids absolutely loved it. Derek had a lot of fun himself...and a really good work out from all that jumping. After that we all went and had lunch at Justin and Jen's house and then sat and talked and visited while the kids watched a Christmas movie in their new theater room. 

Remember our big discussion on the shoe horn and pill box? Well, our great friends that we do a lot with, Pace and Amanda Clarke, over the Thanksgiving break brought us a fun treat. This is what they looked like decorated. 

If you can't tell what it is it is a pair of shoes and a shoe horn on Derek's cupcake, and on my cupcake it is a pill box. Random? Yes. Funny? Yes. Thoughtful? Yes. Delicious? Yes. We thought it was a good laugh and then we all visited together and ate our yummy treats. 

Also a important event that happened over the Thanksgiving break: 

I was kind of teasing Derek a little bit about his shoe horn feddish when we were with all of his family at Thanksgiving. As we were discussing and having this argument once again of pill box vs. shoe horn, Derek's dad brings out from the other room an early Christmas gift for Derek and what is it? A shoe horn. But not any old shoe horn. One that belonged to and was built and hand laithed by his Grandpa Payne. So it made Derek's day and it was sentimental. Win-win situation and he has stood by his word and has used it everyday. I still think a pill box is more useful, but I am glad that he now is happy with his shoe horn and I am happy with my pillbox. 

With the Thanksgiving break over we have started to decorate and felt the Christmas spirit around here quite a lot lately. All our shopping is done for family and each other. We have put up and decorated our Christmas tree (which took about 5 minutes...its not a very big tree). I made a cute new wreath that is hanging on our front door. And we are both excited for Christmas to come. Here are a few pictures of our newly Christmas decorated home. 

For one of Derek's classes they were all in charge of designing a t-shirt and then at the end of that they got to print their t-shirt design as well as anyone else in the class that they would like to have done. Derek came home with a new shirt for me and a new shirt for him. Here they are. Derek designed the blue t-shirt that was his. They are both supposed to be humerus and probably have some slightly nerdy graphic design jokes involved but I like them. 

We also had Friendsgiving this past weekend. It is the 2nd annual Friendsgiving and we have loved the tradition. What is Friendsgiving you might ask? Well its Thanksgiving with Friends. We all bring something and have a second Thanksgiving feast one week later after the actual Thanksgiving holiday. We had a lot of fun attending that. 

This past week at church a member of our high council took some free Christmas pictures of couples and gave them to us if we wanted to make Christmas cards or anything like that. This is one of the pictures he took of us. 

And with all of that said, Happy Holidays to all of you and good luck with finals and all of your many work endeavors and such until the Christmas break. We will be doing some big final projects around here at our house to get things turned in for the end of the semester and before the Christmas break. 

November Update

This is Derek writing the post for this week. We are doing very well, but not much else to report on. Both Bib and I have been trying to get ahead with work and school so that we will be able to relax during the Thanksgiving break.

We saw the movie Lincoln last night with my parents and we all liked it very much. We got there a bit late, so we ended up sitting in the front section of the theater and had to strain our necks to look up at the screen the whole time. It was still enjoyable, but we all left with some soreness in our necks. (Last week we also saw Wreck-it-Ralph with Bib's parents. We also recommend that everyone sees it as well.)

Bib and I are working on eating healthier and exercising more. Yesterday morning I played basketball with some guys in our ward and I am super sore now. Bib also did a work out and she reports soreness as well.

That is all. Have a nice Thanksgiving.

Halloween, Preschool Conference, and Life.

It was a very hectic week this week. I had to go out of town on the afternoon of Halloween as soon as I got off work and all the kids went home to a state preschool conference in Provo. I had some huge assignments due in my online class and a lot to do around the house to get ready to leave. Wednesday at preschool we just all dressed up for Halloween. It was a crazy and fun day. The kids loved our Halloween party and I took some fun pictures from that.

Derek took this picture right before he dropped me off at work. 

My little niece came to get her picture taken with me while I was at work. We were both ladybugs... we couldn't pass it up. 

My nephew Eli who goes to my school also got in on some of the snap shots. He was Frankenstein. He didn't paint his face green for this one but he was all decked out on Halloween night. 

We had a big staff lunch at school for Halloween. This is what I took for everyone to share. Hopefully you can tell what it is. 

As soon as all the kids went home from school all of us teachers changed out of our Halloween costumes and headed for Provo. We went out to eat at Zupas the night we got there and then all crashed at our hotel because we were so tired. Carolyn (my fellow teacher) found out some of my sleeping habits of sleep talking during the nights. I was out cold. We spent the days in conferences and workshops on ideas on how to be a better teacher. Some ideas I thought were great and I could really apply and some ideas I thought were a bit extreme. It was a great conference and we all had a lot of fun. Unfortunately I was a slacker and didn't take any pictures during our adventures on the trip but I have some great memories with those ladies. I'm so blessed to be able to work with such great people and a job that is so perfect for me.

We did some shopping and eating and had a great time. After the conference on Friday we all were ready to come home. Derek came and picked me up from the preschool and when I got home I found this...

I think that's probably the longest we have been apart since we started dating and we both were happy I was home. I have such a good husband.

While I was gone these are some of the things Derek did: School, homework, work, homework, got to go eat dinner with his parents and LeAnne and Trent who were visiting, homework, go to a mini workshop and class on letter press, and more homework. He is such a hard worker and he even got some things done around the house. We can't wait for his semester to be over.

We woke up Saturday morning and went on a nice walk. Lately we have really enjoyed the fall weather and going out on walks. We were able to get some things done and visit family.

This morning (Sunday) we both got up early. Derek did some reading and I was finishing up one of my big assignments for my class and preparing to take a quiz when I looked down at my wedding ring and realized one of my diamonds was missing. It has made us just so sad. Derek and I said a quick prayer that we would find it and have been keeping our eyes peeled. The diamond that is missing is pretty dang small so our chances aren't good but we will hope. Luckily its under warranty and they will replace any lost diamonds for free but we were pretty sad. Here is a picture of my missing diamond ring.

Don't mind my dry man looking hands. But if you can see the small diamond that makes up the square in the middle of my ring is missing. :(

Until next week...

Halloween Festivities

It was another busy week at the Payne house. Derek and I both had a great fall break. It was nice to not have to go to school and to be able to catch up on some serious cleaning and homework that we were very behind on. The week went by really quickly. We both kept busy with work and school and then on Friday night we had our annual ward Halloween party. About 2 hours before the party started Derek and I were scrambling to try and figure out what we should dress up as. We called up Mark and Krista and were able to borrow some of Marks scrubs for Derek to be a doctor and I already had my scrubs (we are allowed to wear scrubs to my school occasionally when we know we will be getting dirty). So we went as a Doctor and  a Nurse. We had a lot of fun at the ward activity. There was dinner, piniata, costume contest, games, pumpkin carving, etc. Here are a few quick snap shots of us on our way to the party.

The next night we had another party to go to as well. We had a big game night with a bunch of our friends. There were about 5 different couples there and we had a TON of Halloween treats and games that we played there. We all had some really really good laughs. We just aren't used to all this partying and we are both a little worn out. :) We had a lot of fun at both get-togethers and are ready for another week. We might even get a few trick or treaters coming to our apartment. Happy Halloween everyone!

Beating the Odds over and over again

Thursday after Derek got done with work we headed up to Salt Lake City. We spent the night at my Uncle John and Aunt Jean's condo. They live literally across the street from the conference center. They have an amazing view from their place and we love staying with them. It makes it really easy for us when we have early morning doctors appointments because they live very close to Primary Children's Hospital. Here is a few snap shots of the view from their place. Notice the temple, church office buildings, other tall buildings, the roof of the conference center, and in the bottom picture is the state capitol.

Friday morning we had Derek's regular cancer check up...except this one was kind of a big deal...it was his 2 year mark. The doctors always have told him that they needed to check him every 3 months for the first 2 years after remission (which we have been doing). The percentage of his kind of cancer is much more likely to come back in the first 2 years than any other time which is why they keep a really close eye on it til that point and then the percentage drops drastically after that. Well they said Derek was healthier than ever and had once again beaten the odds. We were so excited. Now we only have to go every 6 months for his check ups and it will slowly fade out after that. Derek is doing great. He feels better than he has in a long time and he is happy where he is at. The doctor gave us the 2 thumbs up that he is looking great and doing great. Yay...for a clean bill of health! That's my Derek...beating the odds over and over again. We are so blessed.

Shoe Horns vs. Pill Boxes

I bet you are all wondering why such an odd title of a post "Shoe Horns vs. Pill Boxes." I will explain.

Shoe Horn:

This morning as Derek was getting dressed he was sitting down on the bed (imagine a Mr. Rogers position) putting his shoes on one by one when he started struggling with one of his shoes. After struggling and finally getting his shoe on his foot he said to me, "Do you know a great gift you could get me that would be cheap?...A shoe horn." My response to this was... well I just started laughing. I truly thought he was joking. I didn't mean it in a mean way. I have never heard of anyone actually using a shoe horn except possibly a few men over the age of 80. I don't think any of the males in my family even own a shoe horn, or ever have or will. I've never seen anyone use them and to me they seem pretty useless. Maybe I am just a little naive when it comes to shoe horns, but they just don't seem to be that useful of an item for me. Derek went on to debate that he would use a shoe horn every morning (I'm not sure of that) and that it would probably save him 15 seconds a day which over a year (he really did do the calculation) would save him an hour and a half. I told him that if he could find anyone our age that actually used a shoe horn and found someone else that told Derek that would be a smart purchase and useful to him than I would be happy to buy him one. I am happy to buy him one anyway, but more of a joke from me. Apparently a simple shoe horn is what makes my husband happy. Thoughts on this from anyone?

Now onto the Pill Box...

Pill Box:

To start off the story here is a little background: Derek and I take a huge handful of vitamins every morning. Our vitamins consists of  Vitamin C, Vitamin D, selenium, acidophilus pill, cranberry pills, bone supplements  a multi-vitamin pill, and 4 balance of nature pills. Those are our basic everyday pills. Sometimes we even have additional pills. It takes me about 1 minute (or more...but lets just say 1 minute for easy math) to separate these pills every morning between Derek and I to make sure we get all the different pills. I also did some calculation and that adds up to 365 minutes a year or roughly 6 hours a year. As I was at the pharmacy the other day waiting for a very long time for my prescription to be ready I started wandering the store. I came across a pill box divider. As pictured above, they have the big S M T W T F S on it and you separate all your pills into everyday so you can keep track of all your pills and on what days you should take what pills. Well, I thought it was brilliant to make this purchase saving me 6 hours a year dividing these up at the beginning of every week so that each morning when we are usually in a rush we can just grab our pre-sorted pills and move on with life...easy. Excited about my pill box purchase, I come home to show Derek and what does he do? He laughs at me. He says only old crazy people that have a crazy amount of pills own these. At least mine is a useful thing that saves us time and struggle each morning. Is it so bad to try and be organized like this? Thoughts on this from anyone?

Now, I do admit. No matter how you go about this, we kind of do sound like old people. Derek with his shoe horns and me with my pill boxes. But now I would like to open this up to our readers out there. What one do you think is more practical? We are taking a poll.

A Quick Snapshot of This Week

I'm a little late on updating the blog and because lack of time its just going to be real quick. We were able to go to the Les Miserables musical at the Shakespeare Festival this last week. We have been singing songs from it all week. It was really amazing, I've always been a major fan of the Les Mis music but it was a lot of fun to go to.

We also had the opportunity to listen to conference this weekend which I'm sure all of you were also able to do. We really enjoyed all the talks. Derek's favorite talk was at the priesthood session by Neil L Anderson. My favorite talk was in the Sunday morning session by Jefferey R Holland. All the talks were great and we were excited to hear all the fun announcements and changes for the church.

We were able to spend some good quality time with both our families as well. We went back and forth in between houses watching with my parents and my sister and her family and Derek's parents and his brother and his family. On Saturday night when the guys were at the priesthood session the Paynes and the Keates all joined forces, got together and the girls made cards and had treats while the kids played and watched movies. Krista's family was nice enough to invite us over for crepes for breakfast on Sunday morning. Yummy! It was a lot of fun. Here are a few pictures that the Paynes took at our time over at their house.

All listening to conference. 

Noah and Grandpa Payne picking Carrots from the garden.

Hannah and I fell asleep during the afternoon session. Woops. It was a good nap though. Hannah sure likes to cuddle up to us. We love it!

It was a great weekend and we were grateful for all the time we were able to spend with our families and listen to all the great talks from the leaders of our church.