Shenanigans and Job Interviews

Sundays we have church from 11-2. I thoroughly dislike that time. I know that many people love it, but I just have always struggled with it being right in the middle of my day, but I digress. Last Sunday afternoon following church the weather was gorgeous and Tom and I had the wonderful opportunity to go for a walk.

Springville, is a small town just south of Provo and while it's not exactly the sticks, it's actually fairly well populated, there is still a fair portion of the community that is agricultural. So, pretty much down the street from us and across from our Church building is this family that has a tiny little animal farm. They have pens with horses, chickens, cows, llamas, sheep, goats, emus, and this weird sort of shaggy cow looking thing that Tom and I haven't been quite able to decide what it is, that line the road. Frequently, after church families will take their children across the street to pet the animals. Sunday, our walk happened to take us in that direction and I begged Tom to stop and pet the animals with me. Tom was a little hesitant for fear that they might bite, but I eventually wore him down. Most of them would just sort of blink at me when I whistled to them but there were a select few that obliged, including one of the llamas! I told Tom I was a llama whisperer.

That night we were sitting at home discussing the adventures of our day and Tom got to wondering about whether the animal I petted was actually a llama or an alpaca so he did a search on Wikipedia. These were the images that accompanied the article on alpacas.

Tom's Favorite Picture

                                         

Felicia's Favorite Picture

You cannot tell me that you don't at least giggle a little to yourself when you see these. I seriously laughed for at least twenty minutes at these photos....there were tears. My favorite is the white alpaca with the farmer guy, it still cracks me up when I look at it. Needless to say, Alpacas are my new favorite animal.

Last week I bought into Bountiful Baskets which, if you don't know, is a produce co-op. Basically, you and a bunch of other people in your community each pay $15 for your "basket" and then that money is pooled together and used buy fresh local produce. We picked up our basket last Saturday and it had a pretty good amount of produce including a small cantaloupe, watermelon, and pineapple, romaine lettuce, two heads of cabbage (which Tom and I initially mistook for iceberg lettuce...oops), onions, green peppers, squash, oranges, bananas, and two artichokes. I knew what to do with everything in that basket except the cabbage and the artichokes. Monday, after some thorough searching on Pinterest I found a recipe for Spinach Artichoke Pasta. The recipe called for canned artichokes which we already had some of, but I figured I could just add the fresh ones we got in our bountiful basket along with it. At one point as I was preparing the artichokes I look up to find Tom doing this....

He was shirtless because he had been playing WiiFit and doesn't like to get his Gs all sweaty.

Tuesday, Tom was able to schedule two job interviews for the latter part of the week. One, with Adult Protective Services (APS) in St. George on Wednesday afternoon, and the other with a place called Red Mountain Behavioral Health in the Phoenix area on Thursday afternoon. That being said we got things packed up on Tuesday night and left Springville early Wednesday morning in order to make it down to St. George in time for Tom's interview with APS.  

Tom looking spiffy-pants on the way down to St. George.

While Tom was at his interview that afternoon I got the opportunity to hang out at the St. George Temple and enjoy the scenery. Then, when Tom was finished he picked me up and we were off on another 6hr car trip down to Mesa, AZ. Tom was pretty pumped because this was going to be the farthest south he had ever been in the continental US.

From St. George the GPS wanted us to take the I-15 and go through Las Vegas, but we opted for the scenic route and took Route 89 instead. Northern Arizona is actually quite pretty.

As we were passing through Kaibab National forest on the 89 we kept seeing signs for something called "cliff dwellers" which we were kind of confused about. Eventually we came to it and it turns out its just this quick little turn out on the side of the road where you can see some cool American Indian cave dwellings and a bunch of huge rock formations. Below, Tom is "holding" one up.

Also, on the 89 we passed by two entrances to Grand Canyon National Park. The first one we came across was the entrance to the Northern Rim in Kaibab National Forest but, the entrance was closed for the Winter (go figure that May is apparently still considered Winter down there). We were a little bummed, but a few hours later we came upon the entrance to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, so we decided to go have a look-see since Tom had never seen the Grand Canyon before.

 

It was pretty late in the afternoon/early evening when we got there and the sun was just setting so viewing circumstances weren't ideal, but we still got there. And, I suppose the one bonus to getting there so late was that by the time we got there they had already closed down the guard stations for the day so we didn't have to pay the $25 entrance fee!

We got to our hotel in Mesa late Wednesday night and were going to try hit the Mesa Temple Thursday morning before Tom's job interview. Unfortunately, I woke up that morning with a pretty gnarly sinus headache and what Mom said she thought sounded like a sinus infection...awesome. So instead we settled for just taking a tour of the temple grounds and visitor's center and taking a quick peek at the Gilbert, AZ 9/11 memorial.

Again, while Tom was at his job interview I hung out at the temple. Which, can I just say the temple grounds in Mesa are huge and lovely. Tom said it reminded him of a little oasis and I must say that my favorite part was that it just seemed so still in the temple grounds. Outside on the street it was so busy with traffic, etc. but the minute you walk in the temple grounds it is very peaceful and it seems that the only thing you can hear are the birds singing in the trees.

Following Tom's interview we took off for St. George again so that our trip back to Springville on Friday wouldn't be quite as long. This time we did end up taking the I-15 up through Vegas and we got to stop and see the Hoover Dam on the way!

We stopped and spent Thursday night in St. George. Friday morning we woke up and got to attend the St. George temple. We also took a tour of the St. George Tabernacle before heading back up to Springville. We got home last night around 5pm.

Thursday, I hit the 27 week mark with Noah and so this morning I had to go to the lab at the hospital and have my glucose test done to screen for gestational diabetes. The punch I had to drink for that was really nasty and I practically gagged it down with Tom snickering at me a good portion of the time. 

27 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He made up for it though because when we got home there was a man waiting to deliver these for me...my Mother's Day gift from Tom.

What a sweet and wonderful husband I have! :)

Months in Review and So...

So....I've been meaning to update this for a while but just have not gotten around to it. Things just got kind of crazy after Valentine's but I was texting Cherstin today and I thought: "gee...I need to be better at that. Just like my awesome sister." So where did I leave off....

Last February on President's Day Tom and I had been dating for about a week. We spent the day together that day by going to a French bakery in Salt Lake called Gourmandise at which point we went back to Tom's apartment in Provo and played a game of travel Scrabble on Tom's couch. So this President's day we decided that we couldn't think of a better way to spend our day than going to Gourmandise again and playing another rousing game of travel scrabble, along with some other added adventures.

On our way up to Gourmandise I talked to Mom and she asked if we would mind putting flowers down on Grandpa's grave since his birthday was that coming Friday. No prob...or so we thought. The problem was that Utah had an unusually cold winter with a good amount of snowfall and Tom and I severely overestimated the amount of snow that had actually melted.

This is what the cemetery looked like when we arrived. It was basically a field of snow.

Tom and I could not remember the placement of the grave, especially with all the snow, and the caretaker's office was closed for the holiday. After about a half hour of trudging around in the snow and trying to clear off the gravestones with our shoes Tom remembered that he had a mini-shovel in the trunk of his car!

Then one of us had the brilliant idea to use my phone to look up photos Brian had posted of the interment. From those we were able to find the approximate placement of the grave. Thus, thanks to some brilliant detective work on our part the day was not lost and we were able to find Grandpa's, Grandma's, and Tony's graves.

The following Thursday, February 28th, was Tom's 26th Birthday! It started out by me making him breakfast in bed...french toast and eggs!

 I use to have a sandwich cutter that would decrust your sandwiches and then cut it into the shape of dinosaurs. I was going to use it to make Tom dinosaur french toast, but alas, the day before his birthday I could not find it. I tried to fashion him a piece of french toast cut into the shape of Yoda, but my crafty-pants skills are sorely lacking and Yoda turned out looking more like a demon. Sorry, no pictures.

 We had to spend the majority of the day in classes which was a major bummer for Tom, but we still managed to make it a somewhat special day. We celebrated in the evening by going to Texas Roadhouse for dinner since our Valentine's day attempt had been a bust.

Afterwards, Tom and I went to the store so that he could pick out his birthday cake. I felt kind of like a lame-o wife for not making it myself but Tom said it was alright and he enjoyed it all the same.

Mmmm....Boston Creme Cake!

Then it was time for Tom to open his presents! He got three new pairs of dress socks and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

Tom calls them his "Booth" socks! Ha I got him hooked on Bones!

In early March it was time for the BYU Luau. Since BYU has a pretty good portion of the student body that is Polynesian, every year they put on a Luau where students with heritage from each of the different Polynesian islands: Hawaii, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, and New Zealand can showcase their cultures. And since Tom served his mission in Tonga and has a healthy love of all things Polynesian we went to the Luau this year. There was a video to go with it but for some reason I can't get Blogger to cooperate.

March also hosted some very lovely weather and Tom and I were able to spend some time outside enjoying it.

We played frisbee which is my sport of choice. 

Tom also bought me a baseball mitt and we enjoyed some catch. 

I also learned how to throw a football and a rugby ball...sort of.

Rugby balls are a lot bigger than a football and thrown in a way that is completely counter-intuitive to me so it took a bit of time to pick it up.

On March 21st I reached the 20 week mark with the pregnancy and we got to go to have the ultrasound done! We found out that we are expecting a little baby boy to be named Noah Richard Bibber! It was funny watching the ultrasound technician getting frustrated because Noah wouldn't move or cooperate at all. It seemed like everything the ultrasound tech tried to show us, Noah would cover it up, especially his boy parts. Our little prude should be getting here sometime around August 6th.

When Tom and I started dating he was in LOVE with this band from Provo called Imagine Dragons. I had never heard of them before, but the more I listened to them the more I liked them. That summer Imagine Dragons gained a lot of radio play with their song "It's Time" and now they have become pretty popular. I believe they even do the title song for Iron Man 3. However, my favorite song of theirs is "Radioactive",

Back in December Tom heard that Imagine Dragons would be doing a concert in Salt Lake on March 22nd so I pre-ordered tickets as one of Tom's Christmas gifts. So at the end of March we went to their concert. It was pretty good but super loud and Tom was worried that we had ruined Noah's hearing. He's going to be a great Dad. :)

At the Imagine Dragons Concert!

For Easter, we had Flora and Annika over for dinner! We made a meal complete with ham, funeral potatoes, biscuits, asparagus, and strawberries. Afterwards we dyed eggs and had an Easter Egg Hunt.

If you look close you can see a bright blue Easter Egg hanging out on the fence post just behind Tom.

Still Hiding Eggs

Now time for finding eggs!

April came and with that the last few weeks of school. Tom and I both finished our internships on April 12th. It was a little bittersweet. The following week was the last week of classes so we were busy finishing up projects and such. One of the classes we had to take this semester was a class on Community Organization and we had to do a class project that would in some way give back to the community. Our class partnered with some key leaders in Provo School District to work on developing a suicide prevention manual called "Hope 4 Utah" for teachers. We had to put on a banquet to introduce the manual, which I was in charge of organizing. Our hard work was featured on the news and you can even see Tom and I up close! We're famous! I couldn't find a way to post the video directly but follow the link to Watch our 15 seconds of Fame!

That same week Tom and I also took our licensing exams to prove that we know enough to officially become social workers. Tom took his on Monday and after a huge fiasco with the social work board office concerning the change from my maiden name to my married name, I took my exam on Friday.
The night before my exam Tom left me a sweet note on my phone.

We both passed our exams and will be receiving licenses as Clinical Social Workers (CSWs) once our final transcripts are sent over to the Utah department of licensure from BYU. After that we have to find jobs that will provide us with 4,000 hours and at least 2 years of supervised work experience before we can become Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSWs) and work independently without supervision. It's almost like residency for doctors.

The following Tuesday mama and papa Bibber got into town for graduation. We took a trip up to Brigham City and spent some time with a missionary couple, the Harrison's, from Tom's mission and went and saw Promontory Point.

Thursday was commencement at which Elder Perry spoke. And Friday morning was convocation where we walked and officially received our...degree holders. Ha. The actual Master's Degrees will come in the mail in a few weeks.

Do you like our sleeves? Everyone in our program kept playing with them, pretending to fly and what not. Yeah, we're mature.

Friday afternoon following convocation the School of Social Work hosted a reception for graduates and their family members. We got some pretty sweet pics with our professors...the ones who were there anyway.

Us with Dr. Roby. Our faculty adviser. Tom was also her Research Assistant our first year in the program.

Dr. Limb- our program director. (notice that by this point I've begun removing my robes.)

Dr. Marett! My favorite professor. He told Tom and I that we have a unique flow and asked us to e-mail him if we ever got divorced because he would be surprised. I think we might be the basis of a research study.

Dr. Seipel- Our Macro-Social Work Guru.

K.Shaf! Our stats professor and all around pal.

Saturday and Sunday we got to spend some more quality time with mama and papa Bibber before they left to go back to ME Sunday night. Papa Bibber was able to give Tom a blessing before they left which was really special. It was good to see them and get to know them better and it was sad to see them go. I have great in-laws! :)

So two years of craziness are officially over and Tom and I officially have a Master's Degrees. And now you ask? Tom is being a wonderful husband and is looking for a job...he is super smart and already has a phone interview lined up with a mental health center in Kansas for tomorrow morning! Keep your fingers crossed! And me...well, I'm not even sure that people will want to hire me right now. I'm anticipating that employers would take one look at me 6 months pregnant and say to themselves: "at best we'll get three months of work out of her before maternity leave and then she may not even come back...is it worth it?" I know they're not "supposed" to let that effect their judgement, but let's be honest, employers do and I can't really blame them. Tom and I have decided that ideally, I will be a stay at home wife and mom to Noah and whatever other children we have. Social Workers get paid squat for the first little bit though until you become fully licensed, so if for some reason I did need to go to work, it would be part time and Tom's job would still be the primary one we lived off of. That being said, we're kind of here waiting until the right situation comes along and Tom gets offered a job. It's kind of scary not knowing what the future holds, but we both know everything will turn out alright. Tuesday during the day we had the opportunity to go to the temple and as we were sitting there after our session Tom looked at me and said "We're going to be ok." I know that's true, we just have to have the faith to see it through.

And finally, as if this post wasn't long enough already, Pregnancy Pics!

17 Weeks

23 Weeks!

26 Weeks!