a recap

A recap of our last year to bring us up to speed:

 an engagement

  at the top of this beauty!! (I was so nervous on the elevator ride up)

 a trip to the windy city in June 

I can't wait to go back! 

The summer was filled with work and school and our lives have been consumed by these things ever since. 

Our babies have continued to grow, and although we contemplate adding another, we are so happy with our little family 

We had a blessed thanksgiving spent with my family and are looking forward to Christmas. 

I'm happy to be back in the blogging community and plan on posting regularly to keep me sane! 

Talk to you soon

xoxo

alexis 

me oh my

well it has been a long time hasn't it? too long infact. it's already the middle of january. well i survived finals thank goodness, december really flew by for me and i was just happy to sleep, so i'm sorry for my absense.
updates...well school started and i'm happy for that, i'm really ready to jump back into the books and get my life going again. December was filled with family, papers, and children. We spent christmas with brandons family and it was a full house with 5 kids and 8 adults. brandons brother, neice and dad were able to come down here to bisbee and spend a few days which was nice. i was the official tour guide because brandon had to work for most of their visit. it was a great christmas, and the highlight for me was brandon telling me it was his best christmas ever.
that really meant a lot to me!
oskar and olive are growing and have really been sleepy since the cold started, it seems like all they do is sleep, but they are sleeping with us now which is awesome, i love waking up to a kitten purring in my face :)
our most exciting update is that we are going to SEATTLE in march!!!! i booked the tickets a few days ago and i'm so excited to leave, i feel like i'm in a dream!

pictures from break: actually the worst news from the break was that i dropped my ipod (basically my camera) and cracked the screen, i was able to get a new one because i had a warranty, but i lost almost half the pictures, and all the ones from christmas and new years. :(
guess i better start making some more memories!

finals.

can it be december 8th please? after that i will be a free woman, for 3 weeks until i start school again. don't get me wrong i love school, i'm just a little burned out. i'm ready for that nice degree that i've been busting my ass for.
on a different note, thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful. i'm sad to see this nice long weekend end. my mom was down, so we had a full house with everyone. it was the first time we have all been together in a long time, and it was fantastic. i love thanksgiving so much because there is little stress, no presents/no greedy people. just food and family. (two of my favorite things)
brandon and i put up our christmas decorations, and i'm in love. :)
today has been a nice reminder that brandon and i are have formed our own family, and will start our own traditions this year, not sure what they will be, but i know we will have some.

this is my new starbucks cup, and in my opinion it is the coolest one i've ever seen. it says falalalala over and over, and everytime i read it i can't help but sing it in my head ♥




olive drinking from the sink (her absolute favorite thing to do) and oskar getting in my face (his favorite thing to do) i'm so thankful for these kittens. they really do brighten my day. brandon and i got them some toys for thanksgiving (a black friday sale at petsmart) and they didn't know what to do with themselves, they couldn't decide which toy to play with. it was so funny. i love kittens, if it were up to me we would have more, but brandon is set on two...for now.



just thought i would share one of my favorite things in bisbee, it's right outside the post office and it's constantly updated with things going on in bisbee :) i love it, it's colorful, old, and just plain awesome. i read it everytime i pass it, even if there is nothing new

.meltdown.

so today i slept in, ate cake, watched sappy movies and did nothing. it was kind of one of those days. then brandon came home and i had a mini melt down about money and life. he is familiar with these, and like all other pains, he handles them like a champ. he works full time and i go to school full time; i'm trying to finish my school as fast as i can because brandon and i want to move back to washington (where he is from) i feel bad when i stress about money but i can't help it, moving in together was such an adjustment for money and that was when i had a job. now since it's just school for me i feel like i have a "money meltdown" almost every month.

so i'm going job hunting tomorrow. i have a few places in mind so we will see how it goes. i've also got a big ethnography due in a few weeks so i'm going to the coffee shop tomorrow to do some people watching, and to have a good cup of joe. (or maybe two if i'm there long enough!)

no pictures today.

miss clumsy

today i woke up with a terrible headache because last night i hit my head on our bathroom cabinet and cut my forehead open :( i'm extremely clumsy. i swear that i was never this clumsy before i met brandon, or maybe i was and just never noticed. (brandon always points out my clumsyness) i trip all the time, drop things, but my specialty is spilling drinks in the car. it happens too often. and now my head. which of course got cut on the side i part my hair so i can't even hide this sucker. ugh.

on a different note having brandon there to soothe my tears and clean it up reminded me of how grateful i am for him. he is so caring and really does a good job at making me feel better.

i'm late on posting this picture, but on sunday brandon and i woke up nice and early and went to the top of castle rock. it's this huge (at least 20 stories tall) rock in the center of bisbee, once on top you can see all of bisbee in all directions. it's pretty amazing. we stayed up there, taking pictures and talking, we ended up having to leave because it started raining, but i could have stayed there all day!

our kittens

about a week after we got them. :) sleepy kittens

so before i start covering this blog with pictures of our kittens i feel as though i should tell you their story.

i have had their names picked out since i was a senior in highschool. Oskar (has to be spelled with a 'k') is from my all time favorite book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" written by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is an incredible book and the main boys name is Oskar (with a 'k'). Olive got her name from one of my favorite movies "Little Miss Sunshine" the little girl who is the main character is named olive. i decided that no matter what those would be my kittens names.

about a month after brandon and i moved to bisbee we decided we wanted some company. we had already decided that we wanted two kittens rather than one so they could play with eachother. one saturday morning we headed to the farmers market and saw a booth for B.A.R. (border animal rescue) and we walked up. they had a special going on, two kittens for the price of one adoption fee. we started to look and i locked eyes with olive, a small grey kitten with a chin that is exactly cut down the middle making one side white and one side grey. she was so cute and had the sweetest meow. she started playing through the cage and i told brandon i had to have her. in the same cage as her were two orange kittens and brandon chose the one that was running around and being silly with us. they were eight weeks old that day and i traced their birthday back and they were born on earth day! makes me so proud!!

we brought them home and they did not like eachother. olive kept hissing at oskar, and we were nervous that they wouldn't get along. it seemed like it took forever for them to even sit next to eachother.

5 months later they are in love. they sleep together, play together, eat together, they literally won't go in different rooms without the other one. they are so much fun. on my ipod i have 700 pictures and almost 500 of them are just of these kittens (i'm a bit obsessed. my future children better be ready for me to have a camera glued to my hand)

ironically brandon chose oskar and i chose olive however oskar won't leave my side and olive is in love with brandon. when brandon comes home from work she follows him until he starts to pet her, he just barely touches her head and she is purring, it's so sweet to see. oskar won't let me get anything done without him being next to me, i've had to lock him in our bedroom several times just to get my homework done.

taken just now. so much bigger and still so sweet.

a perfect saturday.

today was such a wonderful saturday. brandon and i were able to sleep in and woke up to the sounds of oskar meowing in the living room because he was hungry. we don't let the kittens sleep with us because brandon is a light sleeper and can hear everything that they do, so needless to say they are happy to see us in the morning :) after we fed the kittens we decided to clean up the house and organize. oddly enough it's our favorite thing to do saturday mornings; we like to get it out of the way so we can enjoy the rest of the day and weekend.

after cleaning we watched netflix which is absolutely amazing if you didn't already know!! we signed up for a free trial and we have been taking full advantage of it. our current obsession is "man v. food"

i left brandon at 2 to go have lunch with my good friend Kaitlin. It was the best time i've had with a girlfriend in so long. she lives in tucson which is 2 hours away so i cherish the time we do get to spend together. we had lunch at Cafe Cornucopia which was fantastic. after that we walked around downtown, it was a typical november day, overcast and cold which is my favorite

after girl time i came home to brandon, we had dinner and are watching more netflix as i write this.

today was perfection to say the least. i'm so blessed!