what we've been waiting for!

okay so the past few months have been really stressful as far as my education is concerned. in august we found out that i got placed to student teach in the winter semester 2010 in .......mesa, az. now i love arizona and this would have been awesome news except for the fact that bobby is in school and has a job and there was no way that we could pick up and leave in the middle of our housing contract to move to mesa for 3 months. this of course meant that i was no longer going to be able to graduate and find a job in april.....but that i would have to wait till next december!! yuck. and that just wasnt going to fly.

so i petitioned, petitioned, and petitioned. and bugged, bugged, bugged the student teaching people here on campus until i think that they just wanted to get rid of me. haha. but they gave me local placement (which means that my school will be reasonably close to rexburg) 'pending availability.' they said that this pretty much meant i was going to get placed so the stress was relieved for a short time.

it continued though a couple weeks ago when all the other local student teachers began to be placed and i still hadnt heard. i was sent an email saying that they were having a hard time placing my major in the districts.

through out this whole time luckily, i had bobby telling me to be calm and that whatever happened we would figure it out. im so lucky that i have him because i am so easily stressed and freaked out and he can always make me calm. so we decided that we wouldnt worry any more and that i would get a job in the winter and summer if i had to and just wait to graduate.

well wouldnt you know it but of course like the very next day it seemed like i finally got my student teaching placement!!!! HOORAY!!!

i am about to become a shelley senior high school 'russet'. yep.....you read right. russet, like the potato. idaho is so weird haha. but i have two cooperating teacher and will be teaching some government classes and some PE classes. im excited to get experience in both my major and my minor. and the other great thing is that its only about 40 minutes away which is better than i was expecting for my local placement....plus its mostly on highway the whole way which is good because i get nervous with the snow.

anyways life is great and im excited to start this new adventure! and bobby is excited for me to graduate and hopefully get "a real job"! it always makes us laugh how at this point in our life a starting teachers salary is going to feel like a million bucks! life is great and we cant wait for the holidays to start!

turkey trip

okay so even though this is a little late, thought i'd write a list of thing that we are thankful for at the wolfe house!

we are thankful......

1. for our amazing families!
2. for the gospel and the blessings that it brings to our lives
3. that we got to go to arizona for thanksgiving
4. that we get to go to iowa for christmas
5. for spencer serving his mission in australia
6. that we both decided to come to byu-idaho
7. that the semester is almost over!
8. for stovetop stuffing and other tasty thanksgiving leftovers
9. for our wii and all the fun times that have been had with friends enjoying it
10. for our popcorn maker......YUM!
11. that we are poor enough that we can now appreciate eating out and getting sweet deals every once in a blue moon haha
12. that im almost done with school
13. that bobby isnt almost done with school so that we can enjoy the cheap rent of rexburg a little bit longer
14. for road trips
15. for cupa, cupa, cupa rice krispy treats
16. for great friends!
17. that christmas is almost here!!
18. that we can laugh at just about anything
19. for the cheap movie theater
20. for our camera so that we can document all of our adventures
21. for or new (okay sort of new) ward and all the great people we've met
22. for delicious restuarants like chipotle, crazy carlos, craigos, red lobster, and olive garden
23. for pumpkin pie blizzards (aubrey) and chocolate ice cream (bobby)
24. for local placement for student teaching (we should find out just how local anyday now!)
25. and finally......we are thankful for each other!!

we had a great trip to arizona this past week and we loved the wonderful weather there! it was so nice to just relax and visit with family. i made bobby go shopping to kohls on black friday with me....we were going to go at 4:30 am so that we could get out of there fast and get back home and sleep but when i tried to wake him up he told me multiple times that he was not going to go. of course...he conveniently doesnt remember any of this. but we did end up going around 9 with my sister dani and other than the extremely long line to check out....the trip was a success!

we had beautiful weather on thanksgiving day and it was fun to continue the brooksby family tradition of eating thanksgiving dinner out back by the pool. i just love arizona! we are so grateful to my family for a great week...especially to my dad for driving up to come and get us! we have the best families ever! now we just have to make it through the next few weeks and then we get to head to iowa/illinois to visit bobbys family! im going to have my very first cold and most likely white christmas! we cant wait!

oh yeah....while i was in arizona a friend of mine who reads our blog was like..."so did you pass your test?" so yeah....i totally forgot to say that i wont find out how i did on the praxis until december 15. so im not hiding the fact that i failed yet! haha. thanks candra! :)

here are some of our favorite pics from arizona.....happy holidays!!

our 2nd thanksgiving together!

beautiful thanksgiving day!

bella is the littlest of the cousins in az and she is SO cute!

the girls making the traditional oreo turkeys :)

hiking adventure with cc, lanah, paytan, cindi, and bella

driving back to idaho at Lee's Ferry

praxis

so tomorrow morning i take my history praxis test that i have to pass to certify to become a history teacher. it is world and u.s. history content knowledge which basically means the history of the whole flipping world! i cant wait for tomorrow to be over already. wish me luck!

five little pumpkins

we have had a very interesting week! we got home from our visit to arizona on monday and had an awesome trip other than a small accident on our way to the airport in salt lake city. (more stories and pictures to come from the big trip.) anyways.....bobby came home with the flu and has been sick in bed all week long. luckily he is finally starting to kick it and only has a sore throat left. no worries avid readers....we went to the doctor and confirmed that there is NO SWINE FLU in our house! :)

but with bobby being sick and me taking tests, catching up on homework and trying my hardest not to get sick....we havent had a very fun week. so today we decided to welcome fall into our home since we really hadnt done that yet. we broke out the pumpkin spice candle and got our hands dirty.......carving pumpkins!!

b-rays super scary pumpkin :)

my pumpkin was a little sillier...

the finished products!

to finish off our fall fun day we are going to make some yummy apple crisp tonight! yum yum yum! and to finish off this post i've been thinking about my favorite halloween song that my mom taught me when i was little all day... love you mom!

five little pumpkins

5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate, the 1st one said, "oh my its getting late!"
the 2nd one said,"there are witches in the air."
the 3rd one said, "well we dont care!"
the 4th one said, "lets run and run and run."
the 5th one said, "we're gonna have some fun!"
then ooooh went the wind....and out went the lights! and 5 little pumpkins rolled out of sight!

gonna soak up the sun

we are off to sun and fun tomorrow as we get to head down to arizona for the weekend for my brother spencers missionary farwell. what a bittersweet trip this is going to be! we are so excited for the fun, sun, and family but it will be hard to see my little brother go! pictures and loads of tears soon to come i'm sure!

you look like a monkey and you smell like one too!

on 10/10/09 b-ray turned the big 23!!! we had the best day celebrating and we even splurged and went to the movies and went bowling which we haven't done in forever! when we were dating we used to go bowling all the time and make bets on who would win for ben and jerry's ice cream and other such treats. it was way fun to relive a little bit of our dating days!

23 of my favorite things about bobby:

1. his first name is bobby and his middle name is ray.....i have absolutely loved this fact since i discovered it on our 3rd or so date!
2. he is freakin hilarious.....for real, talk to him sometime and you'll understand. he makes me laugh like crazy all the time!
3. he makes delicious cookies.
4. he always likes to help make dinner.....okay. not always but he is usually pretty willing to help which rocks because i get super bored doing it by myself.
5. he is a rockstar on guitar hero.
6. he cried on like our second date. he'll tell you it was just dust but its a lie. :)
7. he can finish my sentences.
8. he lets me listen to taylor swift in the car even though he hates it!
9. sometimes he lets me win at wii baseball......but pretends that i really won all on my own.
10. he loves chocolate cake. with no topping. just chocolate cake. (weirdo)
11. he is totally cool with just spending the night at home together with a movie and homemade popcorn.
12. he loves, loves, LOVES football and even though this can get a little annoying at times haha....i love watching how excited he gets about games he gets to play and watch.
13. he always knows exactly what to say to make me feel perfectly happy and makes everything better!
14. he also always knows exactly what to say to drive me absolutely up the wall! haha
15. he is always helping us to be better as a family in some way....he makes me want to be better all the time!
16. he put up with my fledgling cooking skills at the beginning of our marriage and he even married me when he thought all i could make was grilled cheese! luckily i've improved quite a bit.
17. he can fall asleep pretty much anywhere when hes tired.
18. he is the biggest snuggler when it comes to sleeping......especially if he's cold. but if i move and wake him up i'm in BIG trouble.
19. he waited 5 months for me while i lived in alaska. man...that was rough! haha
20. he took me to the midnight premiere of high school musical 3 and didnt even mock me too much about it. haha.
21. he thinks he is one of the worst present buyers ever.....but he is so cute as he worries about what he should get. :)
22. he knows that my all time favorite flowers are daisies and he even let our wedding flowers be pink daisies!
23. he is the most wonderful husband ever and is so perfect for me in every way! and did i mention that he makes me laugh more than anyone else?

happy birthday bobby! i love you 1, 2, 3, 4-ever!!!

celebrating 365

just a quick note reminising back on our first year of marriage! we cant believe that its already been a year......and we're loving every minute of it! august 30th is the best day ever!

this year included:

two apartments

three semesters of school

one cruise to mexico

six trips with family

three car malfunctions

seven states visited

and hours and hours of just being together!!

my very favorite wedding picture!

and 365 days later!

playing catch up

okay, so we are finally back from vacations and done with moving and are spending the rest of our summer vaca relaxing and catching up with friends and on sleep. i have finally sat down and took pictures of our new place for inquiring minds to see. so here goes the grand tour in no certain order

first we have what we like to call the master bedroom....we recently discovered a great deal on a bigger tv from d.i. for our front room so that you can see games and movies better (which is good cause thats about all you can watch on it haha. the channels dont really work!) but anyways...we moved our tv into our room and we have loved laying in bed to watch movies!

one more pic of the bedroom and then we are off to kitchen/laundry room. one of our favorite things about our new apartment is our washer, dryer, and our big pantry across from it! we love it!

next is our living room...which is much smaller than our last apartments so the couch is pretty squished. we just like to call it cozy. :)

we love our new kitchen! it is so much nicer and it also doesnt have carpet in it! haha. we frequented d.i. before we moved looking for new apartment supplies and our barstools were the best find ever!! we love them!

our new bookshelf was another great find that we were super excited about to put in our hallway for our tons of books! we love reading. the second picture is of our jammed pack spare/computer room....bobby is always telling me that we have too much stuff, but i didnt believe him till we had to move it all and find new spots for it all! haha

and finally....the master/guest bath. this is another one of our favorite things about our new apartment because anyone who had been to the old place can testify how tiny it was!!

so thats it in a nutshell.....WE LOVE OUR NEW APARTMENT!!

i hate....

moving!!!!

but i love love love our new apartment!

brown and pink

so i had a problem because we are moving into a new apartment this week (which we are super siked about by the way because it is way better than the apartment that we are in! but more about that later...) anyways. moving into a new apartment and the only downside is that we have a lot less closet space in the new apartment and we have a ton of blankets in our closet that i had no idea what to do with. my friend mal, who just got married, lives in the same apartment complex had the same problem and she got a cute basket/coffee table for her blankets. but i couldnt find a basket that big in our price range right now so i had to get a little creative and came up with this guy for our new apartment......

not going to lie......didnt know exactly how my idea was going to turn out but..... i love it!!!!!!

so all i did was take a big tub that we had been using for storage and covered it with fabric (brown and pink....i know. i cant help it...they are totally my favorite!!!) i put some quilt matting underneath the fabric to help get rid of the tub shape and make it a little more kooshy. bobby was even happy about how good it turned out and he usually doesnt care about this stuff haha. it is the perfect box for blankets and i have been feeling quite proud of my craft and wanted to show it off!

we are moving into our apartment on thursday and we are so excited! we are going to be living in the same ward as our good friends the judy's and our new apartment is going to rock! we are going to be on the first floor and we get a dishwasher and a washer and dryer! cant wait!!! i'll put pictures of our new apartment up when we get settled in.

right now our life is all about packing. the summer semester is over and bobby and i both rocked our classes even with our busy summer of traveling. we cant wait to move and then take a vaca to iowa the first week of august to visit with bobbys family! we love both of our families and love being able to take vacations with them! this last picture is of us just hanging out at the drive in...waiting for the movie to start. we love our life! :)

oh what do we do in the summertime?

we have had a crazy busy month of june! but it has been a blast! we have been juggling vacationing and schoolwork but i've remembered exactly why i LOVE summertime! last summer i worked and missed bobby and had basically no time for playing, so it has been so fun to relax and go on trips.

vacation numero uno....family reunion

we started out the party month by hitting up the ashton family reunion. this consists of all of my grandma ashtons 8 kids and their families so it is full of aunts, uncles, cousins, horseshoe competitions, crafts, talent shows, and 4 mile hiking trips that turn into 6 miles! we only got to go to the second half of the week because of school but it was still a super fun time! here are just a very few of the many photos...

boch's bridal shower that we gave her...she was oh so excited! haha

picture with my super cute sisters

the whole fam damily...kind of far away

2 week long vaca!

after the reunion....my immediate family came and stayed with us! we rushed home and went to my best friend mals wedding reception in idaho falls and then the family squished into our apartment for a week while my brother and sister went to EFY. they were here for my birthday too which was awesome! we went to the titanic exhibit at the museum of idaho, we went to bear world, we saw loads of movies including night at the museum at the drive in, went on picnics, went to resturants, ate big juds hamburgers, bobby got to go fishing, and we basically just had a blast!

picture with the newly married judy's

birthday pic at the titanic exhibit...which is awesome!

the boys and their big jud burgers...b-ray had the double, kyle had the triple, and pres and spence both tried the singles....so funny watching them scarf it down!

being bears at bear world....the one place that cc really wanted to go! haha

after dani and preston got done with efy, we took a trip to yellowstone national park and hiked and saw all there was to see there including tons of buffalos, two bears, elk, and old faithful! it was really fun to be camping. then we drove for 8 hours to south dakota to see the famous 4th of july fireworks at mount rushmore. so cool! or else.....it would have been so cool if we would have been able to see them!!! they did the fireworks on the 3rd of july because it was a friday night and it rained and was foggy all day so when the fireworks came the sky just turned different colors. luckily when we went back the next day on the actual 4th of july...it was clear and beautiful! it was really fun though, we were able to meet my dads younger sister and her family there and wait all day in the rain together making memories haha. plus...mount rushmore has the best soft serve raspberry ice cream that i have ever tasted!!! delicious! all in all, a great trip!

here are 2 quick pictures from yellowstone and mount rushmore....we took so many fun pictures on this trip that it was hard to decide which ones to put up! i'll probably end up adding more later!

the land down under

i cant believe it....my little brother is 19 years old and he got his mission call last night! it was weird not being there when he opened it cause i just always assumed that i would be but bobby and i got to listen to it live via speaker phone so it was still great! spencer is going to seve in the SYDNEY AUSTRALIA NORTH MISSION!!!!! he reports to the mtc on october 21st! we are so excited for him! i cant believe that he is actually old enough to go and we will miss him so so much! but we are so proud of him and the choices that he makes! its so great when your little brother is such an awesome example!

today is also the day that my best friend from college is getting married in boston! i hate it that i'm not there with her but we just didnt have the money to make the trip this summer. but congrats to mallory and lane judy! we love you and cant wait for you to be back here finally married!

our favorite twins

two posts in one day is crazy for me but i just remembered some pictures that i have been meaning to post of our favorite 5 month old girls jane and eliza! since summer started we have been spending a lot of time with kyle, michelle, and their CUTE CUTE twin girls. we've even watched them by ourselves a couple of times! they are so fun and they absolutely love bobby!!! it is so funny to watch them giggle and smile when he plays with them and sometimes when he just walks into the room. and its even funnier to see how much bobby loves their reactions! we sure love hanging out with the cousins and will be so sad when they move to texas at the end of the summer! here are some cute pictures from our adventures so far.....

we love these cute girls!!!!!!!

and they love bobby!! so cute!

being wife-like

so bobby and i have been married for 8 months and 6 days as of today which is crazy. but what is even crazier is that monday was the first time in our married life that i have acted completely 'wife-like'. some of you may know that cooking is NOT my strong point. just to make it clear, it is not that i dont cook for my husband! i just never cook anything that really requires any skill......i'm very good at roasts, enchiladas, pasta, and all other things that are easy. and bobby usually helps me make dinner cause he gets very impatient when he gets hungry! haha

BUT....monday night i decided to have a little surprise ready for my husband when he came home from work. bobby has been craving meatloaf for about a week and a half now and i decided it was time to fulfill that craving. so....i called my grandma and got her recipe for yummy yummy meatloaf only to find out that she doesnt really have a recipe for meatloaf and i was just going to have to approximate it.

let me make this clear. i am a follow the recipe kind of girl. i am way to much of a nervous cooker to wing it. but, anything for bobby right? so the point of this post is to document for posterity my first homemade meal made completely by myself of my marriage. homemade meatloaf with a special sauce, homemade mashed potatoes, and vegetables. i am actually quite proud of myself with how delicious it turned out and bobby was pretty pleased to finally see some culinary skills out of me. he even picked a flower on his way home from work for me. what a cute husband!

what time is it? SUMMERTIME!

high school musical always says it best! we are so happy that summertime is finally here.....even though we will both be in school for part of it. it was so great to be done with finals and get a quick break. bobby passed chem 106 and never has to take chemistry again and i got an A in my constitutional law class so we feel like the semester was a success.

the weekend after finals, my cousins kyle and michelle blessed their twin girls jane and eliza and a good portion of my family came up to visit rexburg for the blessing. while they were here, we had a big 70th birthday and happy retirement party for my grandma. it was really fun to see everyone, even if it was just for a quick weekend.

the best part of summer is that i get to watch my husband play the game he loves. my husband is a football star!!! bobby is playing running back for the semi-pro eastern idaho lionz team and i love watching him play! i missed the first game because of the big family party but the second game was in salt lake and we had a blast going down there! bobby even took me to see Seventeen Again which we actually both loved! so funny! we spent the night with my cousin megg and her husband and had a blast playing ticket to ride with them and getting frozen yogurt!

the best part was definitely watching b-ray dominate on the football field though! we joke that he has really swively hips....but he really is an amazing football player! im so proud of him and i L-O-V-E, LOVE watching my husband play football! we love the summer!

beeeee busy!

busy as bees is what we have been lately! but we have still have had time to do some fun stuff together. because of work and school, we really only get to spend our sat. and sundays together....so on sat. we always try to do something fun. two sat. ago we went to the titanic exhibit that they have at the museum of idaho right now in idaho falls. we loved it! it was so cool and we are probably going to end up going again this summer. it was a blast and we mostly just love being able to spend the day together.

bobby has started football practice already which he is loving! even when its cold and he comes back bruised and tired he just cant stop smiling when he gets home! for those of you who dont know, bobby is going to be playing on a semi-pro football team called the eastern idaho lions! this summer will be busy but i am so excited to go to his games! the first one is the weekend that school gets out. just another reason to look forward to the ninth of april!!

we cant wait for the next few weeks to be done so that we can relax for at least a week!

sunday, monday, happy days!

my brother spence came up to the exotic rexburg to visit us and get away from work and everything and we had such a blast!! it was so great to spend time with the bro before he left on his mission. he came up for 10 days and we hope he had a good time. we know that we sure did! while he was here, we went sledding a ton! i dont think that bobby and spence got enough of it. haha. they also started a sweet fort in the large pile of snow thats in our parking lot. we had a great valentines day together with a pizza buffet lunch at craigos and i got beautiful pink daisies from my wonderful husband! we got to go to the hot springs and to big judds. best visit ever! we are so glad that he was able to come and stay with us! these are just some pictures from his visit with us....