It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

Christmas is less than one week away! Yikes! Can you believe it? I am not even close to having all of my Christmas shopping done.. I am a procrastinator this year. However, our apartment is looking very festive and we are all in the Christmas spirit! Here is a little peek into our winder wonderland. Enjoy! :)

The two of us decorating the tree.

Our ornaments from Disneyland last year :)

My favorite ornament of all time. 

Last year I made these Harry Potter ornaments. Love them!

And finally.. the star! 

A little photo opp.

Our animals even get into the Christmas spirit! Thomas loves his elf shirt. He is so cute! :)

Tifa wasn't sure about the hat..

Or the shirt.. 

Want to make your own snowflakes? Check out the tutorial {here}.

The bookshelves are even festive. 

Special "kids" section :)

I have always wanted to  make one of these over the dining room table, and I finally did this year! :)

Remember, this is a season to enjoy and be grateful for the people we have in our lives.. not a time to be stressed and depressed. Spend some quality time with your loved ones and snuggle up in front of your tree with some hot cocoa! I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season as much as I am. I'm off to have a fun night out on the town with Tom! Have a great weekend everyone! 

Thanksgiving and New Home

Oh hey, December how are you?

Christmas is here!! Yay! So excited to get our decorations up and make some sugar cookies. Yummy. But first I would like to share a little snip bit of our life in our new home and our Thanksgiving festivities! 

I guess I should clarify that our new home is actually an apartment. I'm sure most of you know this already, but our move in date was actually supposed to be December 12th. However, a miracle happened and we were able to move in last week. Super exciting stuff. This is by far the nicest place we have ever lived (outside of our parents homes) and we could not be happier. It is a great size for the two of us and is in a good location for commuting to work and visiting family and friends. 

Unpacking is coming along quite nicely! The kitchen is done.. Hallelujah. I truly missed having my own kitchen. Our dining room and the living room are both done, they just have some boxes hanging out in them for now. Thanks to my stud muffin, our desks are put together in the office and we are planning on getting that unpacked and organized this week. Bathroom has the essentials out with the boxes tucked away and out of sight until I get some shelves for under the sink storage. As for our bedroom.. well it kind of looks like a war zone. That door definitely gets shut when guests are over right now. But with everything that has been going on I feel like we have done a lot of work around here, so I am pleased. 

Over the past couple of weeks Tom and I have both been fighting off colds. I also found out I have an eye infection in my left eye which is not only very painful but also requires eye drops that make my vision very blurry. With the fight to stay healthy, our move, and our new jobs we were both very tuckered out when Thanksgiving showed up on our front step, so we decide to stay home and celebrate Thanksgiving just the two of us. It was a bummer we didn't get to see his family, but we are planning a weekend to go out and see them before Christmas :) 

I braved the crowds on Wednesday night to grab the Thanksgiving essentials for our feast! I do not recommend going out the day before Thanksgiving for your food.. It was a total zoo at the grocery store. But I got everything we needed and drove home to start getting everything ready. 

As far as cooking goes, preparing our meal was a breeze compared to last year. I did have more utensils and tools this time which was really nice, but everything turned out perfectly and I had it ready around 4 o'clock (which according to Tom is apparently the right time to have Thanksgiving dinner). We started our meal with a salad, followed by turkey, garlic red pepper mashed potatoes, green beans with red onion, garlic, and bacon, dinner biscuits, and had pumpkin pie and cookies for dessert. Here are some pics of our yummy meal:

Sorry I didn't take any pictures of us on Thanksgiving.. But I did manage to get one of Tifa and Thomas! :)

My fur babies are so cute! I can not believe how big Tifa is getting, remember when she was smaller than Thomas? Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! 

Final Moving Update

This will be the last Moving Update for a while (yay!). Yesterday we found out we were approved for the apartment we wanted and today we put our deposit down! Yippee! Unfortunately we will have to wait until the beginning of December to move in, but it's worth it considering this is the place we both really wanted to live. December seems like such a long ways away right now, but it will be here before we know it. 

I will say it feels really great knowing we now will have a place of our own again soon! I miss having our fridge.. But I am very grateful that we both have awesome parents who are letting us store our things (and ourselves) at their houses until our place is ready. Yay parents, we owe you! 

Our animals are adjusting really well. Thomas is super stoked to be back on his "turf", seeing as this is the house he spent almost all of his life in. It is adorable seeing him in such a happy mood because he is "home again". I'm sure it helps that he has his window perches back to watch the birdies :) Tifa is also adjusting well. She LOVES having our families and all the new animal friends around. 

Overall things are good. The first days back in Oregon were very stressful, but I think we are finally over that now.. Especially since we found a place to live! My only complaint is the weather, I miss the warm, 75 degree days! But who wouldn't right? 

On the Road Again

As most of you know, last Saturday was the big moving day. Thankfully packing and loading the truck was a breeze this time! Our friends were really a huge help and made everything so much easier! Big thank you to you both!! It also helped that it was only 80 degrees on moving day, as opposed to 115 ;)

Once everything was packed up, I finished some last minute cleaning. We did our final walk through and we were on our way by 2:30 PM!

Within the first two hours of driving Tom and I decided we could drive right through and not stop at a hotel. Kind of crazy in hindsight, but we wanted to get it done. 

Our animals were AMAZING on the car ride! Tifa was a little angel! She played with her toys some, but she mostly just wanted to sit on your lap and snuggle :) Thomas was also an angel! For this car ride we decided to use Tifa's kennel for transporting. Best decision ever. Tifa's kennel is just a metal cage whereas Thomas' kennel is plastic and he really can't see out of it. He had plenty of room in Tifa's to stretch out and move around. The metal holes were large enough that we could stick our hands in and give him attention. He was so happy. He was purring for a lot of the trip. 

We drove through the whole night and at about 7:00 AM we decided to pull over for a nap. I couldn't fall back asleep so I took Tifa out for a much needed walk/run to get some energy out of her. Then the animals got some breakfast, I got some coffee, and we were on our way again. 

The morning and afternoon were very uneventful. We drove over The Siskiyous and stopped for some lunch near Crater Lake. While doing a quick trailer check (we were towing the car behind us) we noticed a bolt was missing. We decided to call Penske's Roadside Assistance just to make sure we were good to go which turned out to be the best decision we ever made.

Even though we called about a very minor thing, everything regarding the trailer hook up was wrong. The Penske worker who helped us at our pick up location offered to hook the trailer up for us so of course we said yes. After all, he works for the company and does this all the time right? He royally messed up. 

Honestly I do not want to get into the details, but let's just say the guy who hooked the trailer up messed up so bad it's a miracle nothing happened. This isn't even exaggerated. It's a miracle no one was hurt. We brought it to Penske's attention and supposedly they sent a regional manager out to the location we picked everything up from, but we intend to go as high as possible with this issue. We should have never been put in the situation we were in, and the guy who hooked us up should (obviously) not have been doing so because he wasn't trained properly. 

Rant over. 

Once everything was PROPERLY hooked up we kept on trucking. At this point we were about 4 hours away from home, and just wanted to be done. 

We finally pulled up to my parents house around 9:45 PM. We were welcomed with a home cooked meal, happy dogs, happy people, and best of all a shower. 

Since then we have had no time to rest. It has been go, go, go with no end in sight until this morning. We still have a few small things to take care of, but nothing crazy. We really just need to spend time with family, spend time with each other, and get some sleep. 

On that note I am going to make some breakfast and lounge around for a while. Have a great day everyone! :)

Advice for Traveling with Kitty

When I first moved down to California to live with Tom we were lucky enough to have my parents drive down with us. Because of that we were able to make the trip without having to stop somewhere overnight. Unfortunately we do not have that option this time. Since it will just be the two of us driving home we have decided to stop overnight somewhere along the way.

The past few days I have been thinking a lot about our overnight stay and how this will be for Thomas the kitty. Honestly, I am a little concerned about it. Call me a paranoid cat mom or whatever, I just don't want him to be any more uncomfortable than he has to be. Let's face it, poor little guy has been through a lot of changes in the past three months: new sibling, new house, and now a super long car ride and another new house.

One thing that hasn't changed.. His strange obsession with this ONE box! 

This brings me to the point of this post: Has anyone ever traveled long distances with a kitty? Any tips for an overnight hotel stay? Is it better to leave him locked in the bathroom? Or to let him roam free and sleep on the bed like he normally does with us?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!! Thomas and I thank you in advance! :)

Thomas and Tifa

I get a lot of questions about how Thomas and Tifa feel about each other. Seeing as Thomas is used to being an only child and spoiled rotten, he is adjusting.

When we first brought Tifa home she was very scared of Thomas. She stayed away from him for the first few days and then got really curious about him. She would cautiously go up and sniff him, but of course Thomas would hiss and run away. Well, then Tifa grew. She started trying to play with Thomas, and being the lazy cat that Thomas is, he did nothing about it except complain. It was so annoying! 

I tried saving him the first few times, and then I just let him figure out he needed to fend for himself. Well eventually he figured that part out. Now he eggs her on and actually starts about half of the play time sessions. But he continues to whine and hiss like he is being horribly attacked, even if Tifa is just kissing his ear. 

We know he loves dogs and we know he is actually kind of enjoying her. But I know Thomas loved being a spoiled, only child. I will say one nice thing about having Tifa around is Thomas spends more time on the couch with us ;) 

So there it is. Thomas and Tifa are in no means best of friends. But they tolerate each other and are getting better with each other as time passes :) 

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