What is up with the Consolivers?

I don't know why it is so hard for me to write just the occasional blog post, but for some reason it is. A lot of times, I think "Hey, this will be a good thing to blog about" but then I never get around to it. So once again, I will just write a catch up post and hope I can do better. 

2013 was a great year for us. Denton graduated in July and has loved, for the most part, his new job. I think what he loves the most is coming home and actually not having any homework to do :) He has already created several apps that have saved his company thousands. At first we weren't sure if we wanted to stay in Idaho Falls for that long but the longer we are here the more we like it so we are probably going to stick around for a few years. 

As for me, I did my student teaching in the Fall and overall it was a great experience. I really miss my kids and being a teacher. After I was done with student teaching, I was lucky enough to get a job as an aide at another elementary school. It has been hard not being the teacher in the room and not having as much responsibility, which translates into less for me to do so I get bored a lot, but overall it has been really good and hey it is a job :) I am looking forward to having my own classroom and being a teacher again in the fall. It is a little early for jobs to start opening up but hopefully in the coming months some will open up!

Since things didn't work out with our second dog, we decided to get a puppy and man are puppies hard work! We joke that she is preparing us for a baby (I'm not pregnant by the way!). She is finally sleeping through the night and isn't going to the bathroom in the house as much anymore. Her and Koda get along pretty well, though she has a lot more energy and so she is always pouncing on him. One day they will be best friends :)

Koda looks so different from when we first got him!

Being inside and being fed good food made a huge difference

(He looks a lot skinnier now because he doesn't have a bunch of dead hair fluffing him up. He has gained 5lbs since we got him.)

Little miss Kya

Another exciting thing is we may be buying a house in the near future! We have been talking to a few banks to see where we need to be financially before we buy a house. The nice thing about Idaho Falls is houses are so cheap! At first we were looking at a few older houses that were lower in price but we decided that for not much more, we could build a new house! We looked at some model homes today and we feel in love with the design and floor plan but will see what actually happens but that is our plan as of right now. 

A Christmas Surprise

Where to start....I guess I will just have to start from the beginning. I have been doing my student teaching this semester and it has been going great! (I only have five more days left, then I will have my degree!!) but that is for another blog post. My mentor teacher (His name is Billy) and I have become quite good friends, along with his family and Denton. Denton and I will babysit his kids and Denton will help him with projects around the house. So a few months ago, I told him that I was thinking about getting Denton a Jeep for Christmas. Not a big fancy one but a piece junk that he could fix up. He has been talking about getting one since we got married but we have never been in the position to get one before. Now with him working and me about to start working, I felt like it was a good time for him to get one. So when I mentioned this to Billy, he jumped on the idea and agreed to help me. He also said that Denton could work on the Jeep in his shop. Every day at lunch and after school, we would search craigslist looking for the perfect Jeep. We found one pretty quickly that to me was a piece of junk but one I knew Denton would love! Billy test drove it and found that it would be a decent project so I bought it.

Since Denton would be around his house quite a bit and would see it, we decided to tell him that Billy bought it. It has been an ongoing "lie" for about two months and I am surprised that I didn't ruin it. Denton was a bit jealous that Billy got a Jeep and so every couple of days he would talk about the time when he got his own Jeep. (Little did he know!) Since Billy is finishing his basement, we decided to have Denton help to "pay rent" to use his shop. Denton had no idea that was what he was doing it for so thankfully he was more than willing to lend a hand. 

Originally I wanted to give him the Jeep on Christmas evening since we were going to be coming back home on that day, but now I am going to stay a bit longer to hang out with Whitney :) So I decided to give it to him tonight. I started off the night with a scavenger hunt that took us to dinner and hot cider and ended with him being blindfolded as I drove him around and lead him to the shop. This was the result:

This is Denton's reaction which was pretty good! He won't admit it but some tears were shed! Sorry it is kind of long. Notice I can't stop smiling :)

New place and new dog!

We finally got to move two weeks ago and we love our new place so much! We were getting so cramped in our old apartment and since we were moving to Idaho Falls once we graduated anyways, we decided to go ahead and move now. We love having more room and actually having sunlight coming in through the windows. But the best part about moving was being able to get a dog! I have wanted a dog since I can remember (my parents got one three weeks before I moved out, just a little bitter about that). We adopted Koda two weeks ago and he instantly become part of our family. He is a Mini Aussie and about a year and a half old. The owners before us left him outside all day, so his fur was damaged and his nose was badly sunburned. He also had huge mats behind his ears. We are so thankful we were able to find him and give him a better home. So people take pictures of their babies, well I take picture of my dog :) 

He is seriously my favorite thing ever! Besides Denton, of course :)

These are the only pictures I have so far of our new apartment but can you tell how nerdy we are. Dual monitors are the best! Along with two computer desks :)

Other than moving and getting a dog, everything else is pretty normal. We graduate next month, exactly 38 days! We can't wait to be done! I won't officially graduate (but I am still walking) because I still have student teaching to do but at least I won't have any more classes. Denton has already started working at his new job but only 8 hours a week and so far he loves it and can't wait to start full-time.

Exciting News!

Denton got a job!

It all started about three weeks ago when Denton went to our school's career fair. He wasn't really actively looking for a job because we still won't graduate for another four months. But he went just to talk with some of the companies and see what they were looking for. He handed out some resumes but much to our dismay, once he got home, he realized he had been handing out an old resume. We were kinda bummed but since we weren't hoping for much, we weren't too upset.

The next day he got an email from a company looking of an intern and they wanted to interview him. We weren't really excited about it since Denton has done both an internship and a senior project already and a full time job would pay much better than an internship. But we figured it couldn't hurt to just see what they have to say. He went for his interview and the IT director really liked him and asked if he could come back and meet with the CEO. He did and the CEO really liked him too and so they offered him the internship. Denton told them that he would have to turn it down since he still had a lot of time to find a full time job. They told him that they would keep him in mind when it gets closer to graduation. We were kind of bummed but we knew we still had plenty of time to find a job.

The next day, Denton gets an email from the same company saying that they switched the internship to a full time job. (!) Now the issue was if they would pay what we wanted. Denton went to talk with them and asked how much the pay would be. They didn't know but they asked him how much he wanted and he told them. Over the next few days, we didn't want to get our hopes up because we were almost positive the offer would  be too low. We kept watching for an email or a phone call but it never came. Then I guess I forgot to check the mail over the weekend because on Monday, he had an offer in the mail for exactly what we wanted! The next day he went in an accepted it. The only sad thing is he won't start until July 25th. 

It sounds like a great opportunity for him. He will be working with C# (programming: nerd stuff) to develop new things for the company and he will also get to help decide how things are done. He wishes he could start right now :)

The benefits for me is first a steady income! second it is a company that makes cosmetics and already I have gotten a ton of free make-up (yay!) and third, I can get a dog! I am also excited that since we know where we are going to be in the Fall, I was able to get my student teaching switched from Boise to Idaho Falls which means we won't be apart for four months (yay!) 

Catch Up

We had a great year but we are excited to say goodbye to 2012 because we can now say we will graduate this year! We will both be graduating in JULY! We can't wait!

As for the rest of our lives, Denton has a busy semester ahead of him. He will continue to work at his internship, while taking a online class, doing a senior project, and applying for a "real" job. The cities we are really looking at are Boise, Denver, Seattle, and Portland though I really hope we end up in Boise :) 

As for me, I am so thankful the school changed their policy about not allowing off-track students to work on campus because I can keep my tutoring job during my off-track. I love being a math tutor. It has been the best job I have ever had. I feel like I am making a difference in people's lives and get to help them reach their goals. Along with tutoring, I have a substitute job lined up through a school in Idaho Falls. I am hoping I can substitute a lot so I can keep busy. I am also taking two online classes which are already keeping me busy.

That is pretty much it. No babies to announce :)

I know we are already 26 days into the new year but here are some of my favorite moments of 2012

Going to the Bighorns

Seeing my family

Seeing Denton's Family

Finding a snow dragon

Going to Yellowstone

Camping

Buying our first (not from my parents) car together 

Celebrating 1 year!

Drive-in movies

Bike rides

Meeting Aleah for the first time

Going to Washington coast

Life

So just a update on our lives right now...

We just finished our sixth semester here at BYU-Idaho and are getting closer to graduating! We will both graduate in December of next year. We can't wait! 

Right now is our seven-week summer break and we are both working as much as we can. I have been working Melaleuca for about six months now and have really enjoyed it. It gets stressful at times but most nights is slow and fun :) I really like the people I work with and the environment is great! 

Denton has continued his internship job and while he really likes the people he works with, he is getting bored haha. He started off as a web programmer but then the company created a new department and all of the interns got put in it. It is testing which is exactly what he didn't want to do. He says that it is too easy so we have been looking for a more challenging job/internship. He got a offer for a internship where he would build their database from the ground up which would have been perfect for him! But it was unpaid so we had to turn it down :(

These are some pictures from a hike we went on

That is about everything going on in our lives!

Our Saturday Night

    Last Saturday, I was in a weird camping mood. Since it is incredibly cold outside, I decided to bring camping indoors. When my family would go camping, we always had tin foil dinners. So I told Denton we should build a fort, make tin foil dinners, and roast marshmallows. He was pretty excited for it. We had gotten a bountiful basket earlier that day so we had tons of vegetables. So we went and bought some meat and used our vegetables and I made the tin foil dinners. It was my first time making them AND cooking them in a stove but they turned out AMAZING! We also roasted marshmallows but forgot to take pictures. Unfortunately, we never got around to building the blanket fort because we were in the middle of season 6 of 24. If you have seen it, you know how addicting it is!! We couldn't pull ourselves away! But it was still quite a fun evening!!