We're Still Here!

We're still here, I promise! :) Over the past few months, we've been going about a million miles an hour.  I started student teaching at the end of July and it's going great but oh. my. gosh. busy is an understatement.  Teaching is a hard, busy, time-consuming, tiring, overwhelming, crazy yet wonderful, fun and rewarding career all in one.  Plus I have college classes on top of that.  And I'm a wife on top of that.  Some days I don't think I will be able to stay sane until May and other days are awesome and I feel great.  But I regardless of what kind of day it is, I love teaching and I love the kiddos I get to work with everyday.  I can't wait to have my own classroom and keep improving and becoming the best teacher I can for my students.  

Devin is still working hard at the property management company that he's been at for several months now.  He likes his job but gets pretty sick of driving 100- 200 miles a day, everyday.  He sees some pretty nasty stuff at some of the houses that he inspects and we have decided that we will probably never rent out a home.  But he has taken me to see a couple really gorgeous vacant homes and it's been fun to dream about and plan our future home.  

My mom was in town a few weeks ago and it was so great to spend the weekend with her!  It was a really relaxing, laid back weekend.  We didn't make any plans for the weekend so we just did whatever came up.  She took some photos for Dev and I while she was here and I love how they turned out.  I have been wanting some new pictures for a while since the last time we had pictures taken was at our wedding.  I call them family pictures and Dev thinks it's dumb to call them that when its only the two of us. But since our family will not be growing anytime soon, I call them family pictures now. :) 

Two years later, same pose.  And my hubby just keeps getting more handsome :)

We went to visit the temple after our photo shoot.  I love the temple :)

I love my Mama!  Wish I got to see her more often than twice a year :(

We still love our movies and we still go to way too many :)  We actually never saw this movie but naturally, I had to take a photo!

Dev loves 3D movies.  I can usually only tell that it's 3D in about two scenes.  

We got a new member of the family a few months back!  He is adorable and his name is Pace.  He has grown a little bit since this picture but he is still tiny and so cute.  He is a Golden Greek Tortoise and will be about 8 inches when he's full grown.  Right now he is about 2 inches and he just turned 4 months old on Monday :)

One of my best girl friends got married last weekend.  Her bachelorette party was so fun and her wedding was beautiful!  I love this girl :)

We went up to Snowflake for the 4th of July and had a blast like always.  The best part of our trips to Snowflake is always getting out of the city!!  Since both of us grew up in super small towns, the city drives us crazy!  We love going up there and being able to slow down for a few days.  It's the worst having to drive back down the mountain and into the city at the end of our trips :(  Can't wait to live in a smaller town again someday!

I am going to try to be better at updating our blog so stay tuned!  

xo

Dev is 25

My handsome hubby turned the big 2 5 this month! 

Happy birthday, babe!

Devin isn't much of a holiday person and thinks his birthday is just another day.  Wrong.  Everyone deserves to be spoiled on their birthday, especially him since he works so hard for us and is just so great. :)

I got him a few fun, little things to open and then he decided he wanted to go spend some money at Best Buy on a few things he'd been eyeing for a while so we did that after dinner.

We got take out from a really good empanada restaurant that we found a few weeks ago and have gone to like twice a week since. :)

We went to Spider Man that night which was fun and a pretty good movie.

We had a great day!

This guy is my everything.  I am so grateful to have such an amazing man to call my husband.  Marriage is not easy and, in some ways, much different than I ever expected.  But it is also so much fun and the biggest and best blessing I've received so far.  And more than anything, I know that marriage is ordained of God and that we get to spend eternity together because of the power of the Priesthood that sealed us as husband and wife.  I couldn't have asked for a better man and I am so grateful for all that he does for me and our family. Love you, Dev!

Schoooooool's. Out. For. Summer!

I am officially DONE with taking classes on ASU's campus!  Woohoo!

I have (for the most part) enjoyed my education at ASU so far.  I finished up my last semester of classes on campus two weeks ago and it feels great!  I am not completely done with school yet but I am getting closer and I don't have to go to the campus anymore which will be wonderful.  

I begin student teaching in July for the Higley School District.

I'm going to be teaching 3rd grade and I'm really excited about that!  I was hoping for either 2nd or 3rd because those are the two grades that I'm most interested in teaching. 

I will teach Monday through Thursday and on Fridays, I take my own courses but I will be taking them at one of the high schools in my district.  All the student teachers in Higley district will meet together and have our classes from an ASU professor at the high school which, if you ask me, is kind of weird and a lot different from how most schools do student teaching.  Most schools only do one semester of student teaching so all five days of the week are spent teaching.  But with ASU's education program, student teaching is a year long so we have a few classes that we still have to complete while we are student teaching. 

I am excited to have a year long student teaching experience because that's basically a year of experience that I'll have over non-ASU students when it comes to applying for jobs.  But at the same time I am really nervous because I am not going to be able to work except I will be working as a full-time teacher, what?! so our finances are going to be even tighter than they already are. Joy. 

But, it'll all be worth it eventually and I am really excited to FINALLY be to this point in my education.  It has been a long time coming!

And here we are..

Well I started this post in mid January but never got around to posting it because I couldn't figure out how to post pictures from my iPad... I am not the most tech savvy person but I sat down tonight determined to figure it out and two and a half hours later, here we are :) 

Here is what I wrote in January.
Happy New Year!  I can't believe that it is 2014!  I have made a few resolutions this year and one of them is being better at documenting our busy, crazy, wonderful life.  I recently went back through all of my old posts and even though it's only been two (ish) years since I began this blog, there are so many little details that I have forgotten about different things that have happened.  Also, our computer crashed a few months back and we lost all of our pictures! :( Luckily, I have posted most of our good photos over the past few years on here so we didn't totally lose them.  

Several friends of mine do 'family yearbooks' and I am in love with that idea.  I will eventually start something like that but for now this works great. :)

We had a great and extremely busy 2013.  I seriously can't believe how fast time is going.  Even the days lately seem to fly by!  We sometimes find ourselves wishing for this stage of life to be over with  because being poor, in school, having 'we-are-only-doing-this-to-pay-the-bills' type jobs and being so busy that we only see each other for a few hours most days is really not a whole lot of fun.  But as each day, week, month passes I realize that I need to just enjoy this time because it really is passing by quicker than we realize.  Not going to deny that I dream of the day that we both have careers and our feet on the ground but this time is pretty special too.  We are building our life together and as corny as that sounds, it's true and we are so blessed to even have the opportunity to get an education and have jobs to support us.  And have each other.  I sure do love my amazing husband. :)

The last time I updated out blog was in July and shortly after that I began the Elementary Education program at ASU and have been incredibly busy!  That is a huge reason why I haven't posted anything in so long.  The first semester of the program (which is four semester total) was an absolute nightmare.  I have never been so busy or stressed or tired in my life.  Luckily, my Christmas break was five weeks long and that was a much needed break after finishing up the semester.  All my hard work paid off though and I ended the semester with a GPA of 4.05!!!!!! For those of you that think that being an Elementary Ed major is easy, think again.  While obviously the course work is not as difficult as someone's who is studying to become a doctor or something, there is just SO much of it!  It is difficult because there is so much to do for each class and it is all really time consuming, not necessarily hard.  But I absolutely love being a teacher and the days that I student teach are the days that I look forward and keep me going each week.  This semester is a lot more laid back than last semester was so that has been nice.  AND this is my last semester of classes!!!!  I have 8 weeks left of classes and 10 months of student teaching until graduation!!! Let the countdown begin :)
Devin has been working so hard for the last few months!  Since I'm not able to really work while I am doing student teaching and this crazy schooling, he has been working full time and is taking time off from school until I'm done.  He actually just applied, got an interview and got hired on the spot for a new, better job last week! We are so excited! He starts that next week and it will be really good for him and for our family right now.  I am so, so grateful to have a husband who loves me enough to put his goals on the back burner for a little while so that I can pursue mine.  It has been really difficult at times but each day we are a little bit closer to where we want to be and that makes it all worth it!

I haven't taken a ton of picture over the last few months only because we haven't really done much that has been worth taking pictures of, haha. But here are a few of the things we've been up to since my last post. 

July 2013

We went to a Diamond Backs game with my wonderful in-laws!  It was so much fun!  Having such a huge family, we don't usually get to spend time with just us and them so it was really fun to go to the game with just the four of us.

We were in the 6th ROW! So fun!

Pioneer Celebration Rodeo in Snowflake

I have the cutest nephew :)

One of my very best friends and her husband came to visit and it was so great to see them!  

We love the temple :)

October 2013

Happy Halloween!

November 2013

My first turkey!

December 2013

Mesa Temple Lights

My parents came to visit for a few days and we loved having them here!  I hate living so far away from them so we really enjoy the time we have when they come visit.  And hopefully it won't be too much longer until we are closer again :)

How cute is this Shepard costume? :)

My nephew (on Dev's side) with my dad.  Reading Shrek :)

Our Christmas Tree 2013

We became Apple people this Christmas!

The aftermath...and we don't even have kids, ha!

January 2014

We love spending time in Snowflake with these cute girls

Melt my heart!  She laid in his arms and they just smiled and talked to each other :)

Can't wait to see him be a daddy someday

February 2014

We love green smoothies!  This particular one turned out to be disgusting but most of the time they are delicious, ha!

A friend of ours has a bunch of orange trees so we've been making fresh squeezed OJ and oh my heck is it good!