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I love my boys :)

A very important day

Today, September 24 is a very important day for two reasons:

1.) It is my little sister's birthday! Happy 21st Birthday Stevie!!!!! We love you!!!!!


and

2.) We have had our wonderful little waverly cat for exactly 1 year. A year ago today we picked him up and brought him home to join our family. We can no longer imagine life without our spoiled little kitty and we love him to death.

and so it begins

September is here and our crazy schedules have begun! Brandon is back at school working hard toward his phd and I am diving right in to tax classes and teaching. Starting tomorrow I will be teaching the basic tax class for H&R Block and I am pretty excited. It should be an interesting fall to say the least. On the plus side, after this semester Brandon will no longer be taking classes, just researching and teaching, so that should be good. Other than school though, not much has been going on. I am crafting away with a list of projects that just keeps on going and having a great time doing it. Waverly is cute as ever, but not so happy that we suddenly aren't around all the time. The house is finally put together, with the last thing being putting together a linen cabinet/craft closet that we painted once it is completely dry. My parents came up to visit and we had a nice time, with cake for mom's birthday and a trip to the sad excuse for the binghamton zoo.

We also should have our wedding pictures by the end of the week so we will be able to post a few of them and eventually put them all up on our shutterfly page. Exciting stuff. For now I leave you with a picture of the delicious cake I made for my mom (the first outing of my cake stand!!), and of course our adorable cat :)

Married Life

Well, we're married. As of a month ago. Yesterday.

Things are going well. We have a rather happy home--just the two of us and our cat! We've been getting our home in order. Mostly, we've concentrated on getting the kitchen together--setting up our new appliances and putting together a kitchen island. I'm gearing up for the new semester and Cassie is gearing up for her tax classes. Mostly, we're just relaxing and taking it easy. Cassie is crafting and I'm getting my new computer in order and generally doing things I like to do.

Of course, we've done a lot in the last month. After the wedding, we jetted off to San Diego for a week, which was beautiful. The first day we just lounged around the resort, walked the grounds, swam in the pool. The next day we headed to the San Diego Zoo, which is certainly one of the best zoos in the country. The landscaping is certainly creative--although it can get a bit confusing (we saw one path far too many times). That night we headed out to Coronado and saw the beach and (of course) the hotel. The next day it was to La Jolla and Del Mar. If there's one thing you can say about San Diego it's that it has beautiful beaches--so different from the beaches in South Jersey. La Jolla especially--probably because it doubles as a nature preserve--was just gorgeous.

Unfortunately, the next day we made the mistake of going to SeaWorld. I think we were both just glad that we hadn't ended up in Florida in Disney--neither of us can stand that much artificiality. Luckily, the Killer Whales were beautiful. I think Cassie could have spent all day just sitting there watching the whale swim. But we had to leave early so we could head out to the harbor cruise (which was my favorite part of the trip). We took a tour of the entire bay area. It was beautiful out on the water (and I took far too many pictures).

Finally, we finished up our time with a visit to the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. This was an interesting experience--it used to be the Zoo's breeding area and they have expanded it to be a more natural environment for the animals--but it was unfortunate it was on our last day. If we learned anything from being in San Diego, it's that we shouldn't spend too much time in the sun--especially further south and in a place that never has any clouds!

It was too short a trip, but we had to head back to the east coast . . . because I had to prepare for my first professional conference. The North American Society of Social Philosophy was holding its annual meeting in Philly and I had been accepted as a speaker. It was an interesting experience and gave me a good idea of what a career in philosophy is like. In addition, two of my classmates won graduate student awards (Binghamton was VERY well represented at this conference--after all, it is one of our specialties)!

Since then, we've been up here putting things together and playing catch up on everything we missed during the month of July. But we're having a great time!

-Brandon

2 years!

I know it's a few days late, but Sunday was our engagement anniversary :) We have now been engaged for 2 whole years, and the next time this important day comes around, we will finally be married. I am still amazed that he was able to surprise me with a proposal (not only do I love to accidentally spoil things, but come on, I helped pick out the ring!) and I love thinking back to that wonderful day in NYC. We were in the sculpture garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the end of a long day, just sitting down soaking it all in before we left to catch the train. I was sitting down and he was crouched down next to me and he said "isn't it beautiful?" to which I naturally responded that it was and he said "but the only beautiful thing I want to spend my life with is you" and I turned around to him holding the ring. I was totally surprised, I really didn't think he would carry an engagement ring around in the city all day...and I didn't even notice. I just sat there in joyful shock haha. It was so exciting and it couldn't have been better. Cheesy? Absolutely. But just wonderful. We don't have any great pictures from that day, but I love our bad ones just the same.




I just thought I would share the story for those who didn't know or like to read these things.

Bridal Shower

Two weeks ago, I had a wonderful Pampered Chef bridal shower. It was quite an awesome surprise (thank you Stevie!) and a lot of fun! I truly appreciate everyone who was able to come and who probably gave up some sleep for me and I feel unable to fully express how thankful I am for all the love and kindness that was poured out. I hope everyone had a great time. And for everyone unable to come, you were certainly missed. I am still collecting pictures, but I have a small sampling to put up :)

We are getting down to the wire here with all this wedding business. Less than 7 weeks to go and somehow, every day my to-do list gets a little longer. But I know that it will get done and we will have a wonderful day celebrating with family and friends. That is the main thing going on right now, but Brandon is also working away at teaching his first class. It is a lot of work, but it seems to be going well now that he is on to week two. And that sums up our great Binghamton life right now!

Happy Birthday to Brandon!!

Today is Brandon's 25th Birthday! A whole quarter of a century, wow my man is old :-P

In other, perhaps more exciting news, I would also like to congratulate him on earning his Masters Degree. After 2 years of hard work, he has his masters and is officially halfway done his program at Binghamton. Now he begins serious work on his PhD and can start teaching on his own. In fact, he starts teaching his first class online next Tuesday!

That's it for the moment, I just wanted to update everyone on the exciting things going on in our lives. There will be more updates and some pictures to come next week when we are back in Binghamton after our 9 day "vacation" in NJ.

Let's try this again...

Alright, tax season is over (thank goodness) and I (Cassie) am back from the brink of insanity. A lot has happened in the past few months and the time has now come for a fairly comprehensive update. We have done many fun things these past few months.

We did a puzzle:

Celebrated my birthday with cinnamon rolls, brownie cake, flowers and family:

Had a wonderful valentines day, complete with homemade heart shaped pizza :)

Went to the Philadelphia Flower show:

And moved into our spetacular new place! It is finally starting to feel like home now that things are unpacked and organized. There is, of course, still more to do, but that's part of the fun. I made some curtains for the bedroom that came out pretty well and they were quite the project.

We also had the pleasure, just this past weekend, of visiting with my grandfather, aunt, cousin and his daughter Talia, now almost 6 months old! She's ridiculously adorable and we had lots of fun. (click on the picture for more)

And last but not least, as I'm sure everyone is wondering, waverly is doing quite well. We figure he is now a little over a year old and he is like a little teenager. He is cute as always, but pretty much a brat.

That's all for now. That was the quick update version but now that the weather is getting nice and more free time, we should be able to keep this up better, just in case you are ever curious what is going on in our lives up here in Binghamton.

New Place!!!

We've found a new place to live. It's official tomorrow, when we sign the lease, but we're finally getting out of our shack! The place has a large living room, large dining room, large kitchen, an office, a great bathroom (complete with clawfoot tub), and two (admittedly small) bedrooms. Plus, a washer and dryer. And a seemingly good landlord! Words cannot express my joy. So, here are a few pictures. They're not that great because I couldn't find a good position to take them, but they'll give you a taste of the place.

we.are.blog.slackers

Clearly, we somehow lost the ability to update this thing for the past....almost 2 months. Life hasn't even been all that boring really. We have lots of pictures that are just sitting on our (new!) camera waiting to be shown to the world, but obviously, that is for another day. Currently, tax season is well under way as are the Masters comps so we are both quite busy and a wee bit stressed. Through a rather unfortunate circumstance last week involving broken heat, Waverly, still cute as ever, is a legal cat and the landlord has said we can have him :) I think that is our biggest news, although I suppose celebrating our 7 year dating anniversary is no small feat. In less than 6 months we will be married which is really just crazy. Anyway, a review in pictures will follow soon, but in case anyone was wondering, we are still alive and kicking!