Home Part 1

Well it may be a while before I actually get pictures of our entire house to put on here, but I figured I could start with what I do have. Life has just been super busy and I haven't been able to get the house totally put together how I want. Here are pictures of our front room and dinning room.

I am glad I got the front room done first because it was shortly thereafter changed with our Halloween decorations (pictures to come soon). So far I have loved being able to decorate our home and make it feel like it is our place. Look for Home Part 2 to come soon (hopefully).

Very Quick Update

I don't have much time to write today so I am going to have to make this short and sweet. Jared and I are all moved in and mostly settled into our new home in Bicknell, Utah. Everything is unpacked, and I am still working on getting everything where it needs to be and getting this 3 bedroom house to feel like home. Once I get all the rooms put together how I want I will do a post about our new home seeing as most of our family and friends most likely will never come to Bicknell. Though we are on the way to Capital Reef and have room for visitors. :)
We've casted and have started rehearsals for "The Music Man" this years musical. Neither Jared or I really know how to put on a big show like this, but together we are doing our best. Opening night is November 1st, so needless to say this next month will be a busy one trying to get this show put together.
After being here for 2 weeks a great job opportunity landed right in my lap. My dad is VP Client Services at ATA Services (they service ATM machines) and suggested that they hire another Quality Review person and that I would do a great job. After a few days of training I was able to come back to Bicknell and work from home. Basically I log into ATA's website and approve jobs to be posted onto the website so that our customers/clients can view them. I am really liking the flexibility of this job and that I can do it from home.
I am hoping once I get the house in order and get a routine going with when I work that I can eventually finish my quilts and start on some other fun projects.
I don't know if I mentioned in my last post that we have another member to our family. Our cute 5 year old dog named Bo. He is a border collie/blue heeler and all he wants to do is be with us, especially me. He has become my shadow. We're still working on getting him completely house broken, he spent the first 5 years of his life living outside. But he is adjusting well, and hopefully in the next week or 2 I wont have to watch him like a hawk every second of the day.
We are really liking our new life here in Bicknell. It's different being home all day, and trying to be a homemaker but I am really enjoying it. And I think Jared is really loving being a teacher.
Hope to post more soon.

Update

So I haven't updated on here since March, so this isn't going to be as in depth. But figured I should give an update so that everything is up to date.

Jared landed a teaching job! He will be teaching band at Wayne High School and Wayne Middle School, which is in Wayne County which is in South Central Utah. The schools are located in a town called Bicknell. Bicknell is located an hour south-east of Richfield, and about a half hour from Capital Reef National Park. I honestly don't really know what classes he will be teaching this next school year, just that he teaches at the high school in the morning and the middle school in the afternoon. As I learn more about the happenings of this next school I will try to include them on here. Oh and Jared's first contract date is August 14th, and then school starts the 21st.
With the new job, we will be moving (a 2 1/2 hour commute doesn't make any sense). We found us a 3 bedroom 2 bath home to rent for the next school year. Rent is fairly cheap in the middle of nowhere, we will end up paying $562/month. We will be taking one of my family's dogs with us when we move, his name is Bo and he is a 4 year old border collie/blue heeler. I am so glad to be able to have a dog with us, because I think I would go crazy without a dog. Jared will be moving into our new home on August 9th, and I won't officially be moving in on August 30th. We decided that I should stay a little longer so that I could earn a full months salary. It's gonna be hard to be a part for a couple weeks, but hey after spending our whole dating life living far apart this should be a breeze. Once I move down I have no idea what I will be doing as far as work goes, which is why I am staying longer. We are both looking forward to this new adventure in our life.

That's really the most important stuff that's going on. We keep falling more in love with each other every day, and can't wait to have our own place again.

March Update

Ok this last month, quite a bit went on.
This month was a big month for Jared with the school. He conducted his first band concert this month. He did fantastic, although I may be a bit biased. He also went with the band to festival this month. The band did great. Jared only has 2 more weeks of student teaching left, so he has started looking for jobs. Last week he went to a job fair thing down at BYU where he was able to interview with some of the school districts from across the state. We are both hoping that we can find something here in the valley. Jared is REALLY interested in the band teacher position at Copper Mountain Middle School, which is a brand new middle school opening up this next school year. Some of the students he has been teaching will be going to that school next year, and they are all hoping he gets that job too.
On the 15th we went to St George to be there as Jared's sister Marsha received her endowment at the temple there. It was a wonderful experience. Also while we were in St George when we went to a sacrament meeting we were able to hear from Elder Bednar and Elder Snow and their wives, and it wasn't even a special meeting. It was pretty cool.
We also celebrated our 2nd anniversary. We went out to dinner together and took a drive up by the Draper Temple. We were able to talk about this last year and the great memories from this past year. And talked a little about the changes that will be happening over the next year, and the things we can do better this year.
We are both doing well and enjoying our work. Life is good.

February Update

Well I am a little behind on our update for February. So it is not going to be as detailed as I would hope because well, it's already the end of March.
Well at the beginning of February Jared went to UMEA. He was gone for a few days at the conference. What all happened I honestly don't know, but while Jared was gone he sent me some roses. It was very sweet.
We were on the committee for our ward's Valentine's Dinner. I was in charge of getting the decorations up and Jared was in charge of music(big surprise there right). We decorated with the centerpieces from our wedding. Jared found a lot of romantic Italian type music, and it really set the mood. It was such a hit with everyone that came.
Valentines Day we went out to dinner at Sizzler and exchanged gifts of course. I can't remember what we did after dinner exactly, but we didn't have much time that night because I didn't get off till 6 and we both had work the next day.
Jared's mentor teacher's wife had baby last month, so Jared had a lot of practice teaching. His first conducting performance was at the 6th grade orientation with the jazz band.

That pretty well sums up February.

January Update

Ok here we go into January. So after the 1st of the year is when we really buckled down and packed up our apartment. We were so exhausted from our California and Florida trips (mostly because they were really back to back) that it was hard to get motivated to get moving at times. But we had everything pretty well packed up by the 3rd. We were lucky to have a lot of our family in town to help us with our cleaning (explanation as to why everyone was in Cedar to follow). By the night of the 4th we were 98% done, just a few more things to clean and a few things to pack up. We checked out of our apartment on the 5th and moved up to South Jordan.
So Jared had his Senior Recital on the 4th at 7:30 p.m. He did so great I was so proud of him. Because of his recital all of Jared's immediate family was all in Cedar, which is why we had so much help in our move. My parents also were there for his recital. I'll leave anything more about Jared's recital to him.
Well... we moved up here to South Jordan on the 5th. In case I did not mention it before, we have moved in with my parents for the next several months. And because of this most of our stuff is now stored out in the barn. We now take up residence in a small bedroom (well at least smaller than our last bedroom) in my parent's house. So we went from it being just Jared and I, to it being the 2 of us plus my mom & dad, my 2 brothers (most of the time that also means 1 of my brother's girlfriend because she is here SO much), 2 dogs, and a cat. Yep that's quite the increase. So we are NEVER home alone, and only get alone time when we're in our bedroom with the door shut. Which really isn't terrible terrible. It's nice to be here with them, because I really missed having the dogs and the cat around. In our room we have our king size bed, a dresser(which we share), a bookshelf, and our entertainment center. Not sure how or even why we have all of this in there, but we do and it seems to be working out for us.
Well, I may have mentioned that I was going to transfer to another Maverik up here but I ended up getting a MUCH better job. I now have a job working at a credit union in West Jordan as a teller. I started last Tuesday, and am loving it so far. I work full time and make $1.25 more than I did working at Maverik. So my work days start at 8:45 and I get off around 6:15 when I am working a full day. If I don't work on Saturday I work a half day one day during the week, but if I do work Saturday I get a day off during the week. I really like all the people I work with, and am looking forward to the opportunities I will have working there.
Jared started his student teaching at South Hills Middle School on the 9th, and he is absolutely loving it. He's had many opportunities to teach already after 15 days. There are 2 band classes, 2 music connections classes, a jazz band class before school, and I can't remember what else. I'm sure Jared will post something before his time student teaching is up about how everything is going with that.
We have graduated from a married student ward to a family ward, and it wasn't because we had a baby that graduated from nursery. ha ha ha. We now are members of the Parkway 1st ward, and so far don't have any callings. Though, we are on the committee for the Valentines Dinner for our ward. We both don't really know anyone in this ward, because I grew up in the 9th ward not the 1st ward. We are both looking forward to serving in our new ward and getting to know the people in our ward.
One thing that is nice about living where we do, is that both Jared and I pass a temple on our drives to work/school. Jared drives by the Oquirrh Mountain Temple on his way and I drive by the Jordan River Temple. We hope to be able to increase our temple attendance at least a little now that we live so close to so many temples.
Speaking of temples, I have set a goal that this year I will do more with family history. I found out at our stake conference or ward conference that after March the youth will need to bring names to the temple and that temple names will not be as available (at least I think). So I am hoping to increase(ok start) working on my family history work so I can receive the blessing that Elder Scott talked about in the talk he gave during general conference in October.
We are both enjoying this new chapter in our life. A chapter full of many opportunities and changes. Oh and now that our cost of living has gone down, we are hoping to save up money to pay off the 1 loan we have once Jared graduates, and also start saving for a down payment on a house.
I think that about covers January.

December Update

Okay my goal this year is to give an update every month. I am guaranteeing that it will actually happen, but I will do my best to do so. So here is an update of our happenings since our vacation: Well we went on vacation to Disneyworld  with my family and had a BLAST! We spent 6 days at Disneyworld and 2 days at Universal Studios Orlando, plus 1 day of rest (we all were feeling a little sick and needed a rest) and travel days. We had so much fun. Here are some of our favorite pictures from our vacation:

Yes these are just a few of our favorite pictures. My dad had this photo pass thing, so we got all the pictures from the rides that take your picture plus pictures taken by their official photographers. If you want to see more pictures there are more on my facebook. But as you can see from these pictures, we had fun.

SO after the vacation we came home and went to Cali to be there for Thomas' baptism and a quick trip to see our family there. We made a pit stop on our way home from Cali to see death valley because I had never been there and we have a national park pass.

After our california trip, we then proceeded to pack up our apartment for us to move to South Jordan. Which leads us into January, so you'll have to read January's update for more updates.