A New Do...And this ones for James

Not a whole lot has happened this week outside of our regular schedules of work/school/homework. I did however get a new look. I have had the same hair for quite awhile now and I have been ready for a change for awhile now. So I made a hair appointment and went darker and got a new cut. I really like it and its a good change. Change is good sometimes. It's a fun thing for fall season. If you compare last weeks pictures that we posted to this picture there is a pretty significant difference. I'm no longer a blonde...and yes that's right. Those are red streaks you see in there. It's going to take Derek awhile to get used to finding me in a crowd because he isn't used to looking for a brunette but I'm having fun with the change.

Since not a whole lot has happened this week in our lives that is very exciting we thought we would take a minute and talk about one of our most valued readers of the "Bib and Deek" blog. 

I would like to dedicate this next part of the post to one of our dear friends and one of our most valued blog readers... James McCabe Nickerson. You might all refer to him as McCabe. McCabe is a friend of Derek and mine for quite awhile now. Just a quick spotlight on him: My first memory of McCabe was 7th grade computer class. We had assigned seating next to each other found out that he had the same name as my dad and we've been friends since... odd how that sparked a friendship but it did. Hence, my nickname of James. I asked Derek to reminisce for a minute on McCabe and share a favorite memory of him. One that kept coming to his mind was going to wal mart and buying six foot long sandwiches to eat in Brian Cozzens basement pretty regularly...a lot... through highschool. Of course a bonding moment for teenage boys involving food. He happened to marry one of my best friends of all time, Cicely. McCabe and Cicely have one pet, Tut the Turtle and reside in Logan, Utah. They are great friends of ours. Thanks for reading our blog regularly and being one of our most valued readers. 

Here they are:

Until next time... so long and have a great week. 

Fall is in the Air

Hey everyone....we missed last week with out blogging, sorry. There are probably very few of you out there that actually noticed but we apologize anyway. We just have had very few moments to even breathe and be able to spend time with each other that blogging was kind of down lower on the To Do list and it just kind of got forgotten. But here we are this week. This morning we went to the temple dedication of Brigham Temple and it was really fun to be able to go participate in that. I'm really excited for General Conference in a couple of weeks. It will be nice to be able to just relax and listen to all those wonderful men/women speak to us.

I don't know about all of you but fall is my most favorite time of year. It's just so great. Its not to hot and not to cold. Its the time of year when it starts to be socially acceptable to start pulling out your hot cocoa and blankets to cuddle up in. Leaves changing, beautiful autumn colors, pumpkins, scarecrows, apples, hot homemade soups,etc. Well the past couple of days as I have been looking up at the mountain I kept telling Derek that we have to go up to the mountain before it gets too late and we miss all the fall leaves changing. Its one of my favorite things to do every year is take a Sunday drive up to the mountain and just take everything in. Well on our way home from visiting both our families we finally just decided to make a quick trip. We had a lot of fun and I"m glad we made time to go up, because our schedules are just getting so crazy that I think otherwise we would have kept putting it off until it was too late.

Here are few pictures from our adventures up the mountain. I love the fall leaves up there. Beautiful! One of the great things about living in Cedar.

Don't I just have the cutest husband?

I love this background. 

Me and Derek

We had a great relaxing Sunday drive to take in all the beautiful fall colors. 

Derek and I are both doing great and just keeping busy with same old same old...work and school.

We are so blessed to have such a great life!

Baby blessing Numero Dos

Well this week flew by. We were both busy with work and school as usual. We knew that we would be going out of town for the weekend again so we worked hard to get all our work done before we left town on Saturday. We still didn't get everything done but we did get a lot done so that's still good. On Friday night we had Derek's parents over to our place for Banana Cream Pie and movie night. We had a lot of fun. We watched the movie Australia. The next day we got up got things packed and headed up north to attend baby blessing numero dos of baby Steve (Sarah and Dave's cute little baby boy). We also celebrated Dave's (Derek's dad) birthday which was Saturday by going out to dinner and just having fun being all together. I think we are done attending baby blessings for awhile now. Its been a lot of traveling lately but we have really had fun and enjoyed all our little trips. We are looking forward to staying home for this upcoming weekend. It will be nice to just relax and get life organized. Here are a few pictures from our trip.

Cute baby Steve

Derek playing with Dani. He always loves playing with his nieces and nephews.

Grandma Payne with the Grandkids. Love this picture.

Quality time with the kiddos.

Derek reading Peter Rabbit with Dani Sunday morning before church. 

Grandpa and baby Steve (Happy Birthday to Dave!)

All the gals. 

We had a great trip and had fun spending time with family. Until next week...

Sweet Olivia and School Stuff

Derek and I both had a crazy but good week back to school. First we will tell you a bit about Derek's first week back. Derek has been so so busy with his homework already. He gets home from work/school at about 5 most days and then it seems we have just enough time to get a quick bite to eat and he is off to do homework the rest of the night until ten or eleven when its time to bed. He has a very demanding semester ahead of him and we are already seeing the results. He will enjoy it though. He has some fun and interesting classes ahead of him.

My first week of school was so busy. I came home everyday just exhausted. I forget how much work it takes out of you to work with 3-4 year olds for 6 hours a day and most of them have very specific needs met. I would not survive without my teachers aides. They help out so much. Its been so busy though that my boss has approved for me to higher another aide for a boy I have in my class that has Cerebral Palsy and can basically do very very little by himself. It will be nice to have a little extra help. We covered so much in preschool this week and sometimes you assume the kids would know how to do things, I have to model so much for them. Even as simple of what it means to sit on your pockets, or how we wash hands, or how to push the soap dispenser to get soap, etc. Its so much work but it has been so fun too. I have some challenging kids, but they are so darling and I'm going to have a great year. I also started my USU class for my masters that I am working on. Its every Tuesday night for 3 hours which makes a long day, especially after a day at the preschool. It is also going to be a very demanding class but I'm excited to get going and get that much closer to earning my masters in special education of early childhood education.

After our first week of school we got up early Saturday morning to head to Vegas with Derek's parents. We went there to celebrate Brian's birthday as well as see Olivia blessed. It was so fun to go and visit. We spent most the time just hanging out and visiting at Brian and Amy's house. We also went out to eat at Sweet Tomatoes restaurants, all I can say is YUMMY. Derek and I are going to make it a point to go to the one that is located in Sandy most times that we go up to doctors visits. It was just so good. And you could eat so much and not feel that guilty because its like salads and soups galore. It was fabulous. Sunday we saw Olivia blessed and then we headed home to have a quick lunch (which was also very amazing, thanks Amy) and then headed back home to good ole Cedar City. Here are a few pictures from our trip.

Derek building a tower with Noah

Grandma and Grandpa loving baby Olivia

The child in the picture above is one of the cutest children I know. Seriously. 

Derek all tuckered out from the days adventures. 

An Uncles job: Getting the kids all riled up right before bed time. Wrestling with Noah and Hannah.

I'm just watching Derek play with the kids on the couch when he got this lovely picture. We were both pretty tired at the end of the day. 

Just chillin' at Brian and Amy's. 

We spent our Labor Day holiday off from school just catching up on homework, classwork, and things we needed to do around the house. We did go out to dinner with all of my family at the Pizza Factory and had fun doing that. I guess we are back into full swing of school work and reality at our house.

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: