A Month of Firsts

Well ladies and gentleman, Derek and I have been officially married for a little over a month now. Boy, how life has changed! This month we:

Took our first road trip as Mr. and Mrs. Askham:
A friend of mine recently got back from his awesome mission. The first week of August, we decided we would take the opportunity to go back to the West-Side (of Washington) before school started to be able to visit with him as well as see my family again! Everything had been so stressful around the wedding, it was great to be able to visit home again now that all of THAT was out of the way. I sure miss my family and my little pup-pup. Secretly Okay, not-so-secretly, I want a little puppy of my own to love and cuddle in all my moments of loneliness. I had a dream that I got a hedgehog and I loved it with everything I had. Awww.

Anyways, it was a great trip. On the way, Derek and I even saw this beautiful sunset!

Celebrated Derek's first birthday as a married man:

The Birthday Breakfast I made for him!

The big 2-3! Derek woke up that morning all depressed because of how old he was. Personally, I think he is doing pretty good for 23. Has a nice apartment, a nice job, and a really cute wife ;) We had a great little party, including a nice night out with the family. I even made a cake (but the pictures are still on Derek's phone, so you will just have to trust me).

I got a new job at Taco Del Mar:
And what a H-U-G-E blessing it has been. Everyone is very nice, I have been given a lot of hours (which is bittersweet, but really nice in general), and I can't complain about the free food! Their mondo burritos (20ounces...thats OVER a pound!) make an awesome...and free...dinner for Derek and I to split. In a college town with 20k other students, I view this job as a huge miracle. God definitely answers prayers!

We began our first semester at school since being married:
Derek is really hittin' the books with his Calculus, Accounting, History, Econ, and Spanish classes. And I am just finishing up my last year at WSU with Teaching and Learning classes, and then Econ 430, History Seminar 469, and History Teaching Seminar 480.

Everyone told us that it would be much harder to go to school once we are married, but I haven't found that to be the case at all! So far, Derek and I are both doing really well. I feel like its a little easier to focus on homework when I know that Derek will always be there, instead of staying with him until midnight and writing a five page paper when I got home, and then getting two hours of sleep. Not that that ever happened. :)

We celebrated our 1-month anniversary:
This happened to fall on the first day of school. I was kinda sad, because Derek works 8-12pm everyday, and then has classes until 4pm. I go to school 9-1pm MWF, and I typically work at 4 and I don't get home until 10:30. Do you realize what that means?! I go like 14 hours without seeing him all the time. It's a little depressing.

Little did I know, while I was busy working, Derek set up a cute little indoor picnic for us. He even baked a mini cake for us! He is so sweet, I love him!

Gave our first talks in the married ward:
Okay, this was actually really funny. Our bishop asked us to speak about marriage. I introduced us, and began by saying "We had been married 5 weeks now....The third week was a little rough, but we persevered and pulled through it. Now that we are experts on marriage, the bishop asked us to come and speak to share with all of you how we have managed to learn everything about marriage and be so successful." It was a crowd favorite.

We really did have a lot of fun. My favorite part about it was that afterwards, so many people came up to us wanting to get to know us. Up until that point, Derek and I really didn't have many friends in the ward. So I was really grateful for the opportunity to share a little about ourselves and make friends in the process.

Derek started his first business:

D.A. Tech Repair is now Pullman's newest business! I am not sure if Derek was aware he was living with a wannabe marketing/graphic design specialist. So far we have made a pretty good team. Derek get's frustrated because I don't understand the tech side of it, and I get frustrated because he doesn't seem to understand the layman's terms side of business. So I guess you could say we have a pretty typical working relationship :P

Really though, Derek is so so smart, and we are already getting his name out there. I wish I wasn't so busy so I could devote more time to local marketing. Even without it, Derek has done so good. I have already had some people in the community ask me if Derek could give basic tech lessons for businesses and business owners, which he is really excited for. Especially because these people offer a bit more money than college students ;)

Speaking of money, Derek also had his first self-employed pay day! Way to go babe!

And Derek started our first fire in our toaster oven:
Boy, we were laughing so hard.

Above is a picture of our beautiful toaster oven (sans fire). Derek was toasting some sandwich bread a little too long, and smoke began pouring out of our toaster oven. We got out the bread and derek threw open the apartment door and started frantically fanning smoke out with a towel. I was trying to take the moment seriously but it was just so funny I couldn't stop laughing at it.

Luckily for us, the only thing damaged was some toast :)


Thanks for reading!