Four Christmases!!

We had a wonderful Christmas time this year. Of course, I forgot my camera, so I keep stealing all the pictures that everyone else took! We started our Christmas celebration at Alex's Grandma's house on Christmas Eve. All of his family was over there and we exchanged presents and had a wonderful dinner.Then, we went to my parent's house and waited for Santa to bring Mark and Jake their presents. After we opened presents there, we went over to my Grandparents house with all of my family. We opened presents there and ate our traditional Christmas dinner of pasties. It was a lot of fun! Alex and I decided to do a Zelda scavenger hunt for my brothers to find their present. I made them scrolls for their clues and uniforms to wear. Alex made them each a sword and shield and "bad guys" that they had to fight with their swords. At the end, they found a Wii game. It was really fun for us to watch. I will edit this post and post some pictures of it when Cindi sends some to me... Here are a couple pictures of the "bad guys" Alex built.

Christmas, evening we went to Alex's parents house and opened presents there with his family. We stayed in Arizona until the end of the weekend relaxing and having fun with our families. It was a great trip.

Our First Christmas

We have a pretty busy holiday season planned. This past weekend Alex planned a bachelor party for his friend in Arizona and I got to go visit my family. The boys went to Lake Pleasant to camp, gamble, ride quads, and go shooting. We both really had fun weekends and then we drove back to New Mexico. We are going back to Arizona on Christmas Eve and bringing my brothers back with us to New Mexico after Christmas, only to turn around and come back for Alex's friend's wedding on New Years...there will be a lot of driving!

Because of this, Alex and I got to celebrate our First Christmas a little early. We celebrated it before we left for the bachelor party. It was nice for us to have our own Christmas together. And to appropriately celebrate the birth of our Savior, we ordered Panda Express to go and came back to our house to open presents. : ) We both loved our presents and had a great time. It could not have been a better First Christmas for us!

It Snows in New Mexico

It has snowed a few mornings since we have been here. It is absolutely beautiful and I keep meaning to take pictures, but by the afternoon the snow is all melted away. Well it snowed all day yesterday and I finally got some pictures. Then, it kept snowing all night and Alex did not have to go into work until 9:30 today because of the snow. As of right now, I love the snow! I am sure I won't be saying the same thing after seeing it everyday : ) It is suppose to snow for the rest of the week...I just hope it stops before Friday, so we don't have to drive back to Arizona in the snow.

Alex's Work Christmas Party

On Friday, Alex had his first work Christmas party. There is a lot of people that work in his building, so there was quite a turnout and there was great food (which is always a plus). We played games during the party like The Price is Right. Alex's name got drawn, but we didn't win : ( It was at a casino and one of my friends, had never gambled. So, we went and gambled a little after the party. Alex and I won $2 and unfortunately she learned that gambling isn't as fun as people make it out to be. We had a lot of fun and it was a great experience for our first (and I am sure not last) work Christmas party.

Silly Pictures

I was looking through pictures and saw these of my brothers. They are just too cute not to post. They have such fun personalities! I miss not being able to see them everyday! On our last trip, Jake and Alex were joking around and Alex said he was going to throw Jake through the window. Jake, very smugly, replied, "No you won't because I will tell your wife." We both thought it was hilarious.

Cooking, Cooking, Cooking

When Alex and I got married, I realized that I only knew how to cook a few meals. So, every week, Alex and I try to each pick a new recipe and then I make it. It has been a lot of fun and there has been a lot of desperate calls wondering how to cut up certain foods and what the recipe means when it says certain terms, but we are getting through it. I have made homemade chicken pot pie, sweet and sour chicken, honey glazed stir fry, pot roast, etc. I have realized that it is way easier to bake, then to cook and that we both love desserts over real food (which is not a good thing). I have actually added many new meals to my repertoire. Hopefully, I will continue to add more in the future, so if anyone has any good recipes, please send them our way! We are always looking for something good to eat!

Arizona Vacation

Well, we have been pretty busy these past couple weeks. We went to Arizona and took turns staying with our families. It was an eventful week. Alex spent all his time with my brothers playing Zelda. We went to the Airport with Alex's family to pick up Josh and his girlfriend, Nichole. It was the first time his family got to meet her so we all wore shirts that said "I love Nichole" to welcome her.I went with Lauren, Diane, and Nichole to go and see Twilight! We had been waiting forever for it to come out and I am pretty sure Lauren might have killed me if I didn't wait to go see it with her. Alex is planning to run the Bataan Death March (a marathon with a 35 lb. pack) in New Mexico with his brother and dad. He actually is in charge of training for it in his squadron at work. He is running and hiking all of the time, which includes our vacations. He ran with his brother and dad while we were visiting. On Wednesday night, Kevin got married. So, we got to go to his wedding (which was beautiful). The next day, we split our Thanksgiving with both families. First, we went to my Grandma's house. It was a nontraditional Thanksgiving because of Kevin's wedding. We had Ham and baked potatoes and it was delicious! I don't know why we ever started the Turkey tradition...I definitely prefer Ham. Then, we attempted to eat our second Thanksgiving meal at Alex's parents new house, which was also delicious! We had turkey and lots of different casseroles. By the end of the day, we were both so full! The next day, Lauren and I decided to experience our first Black Friday. We went to Lowes, WalMart, Ulta, Old Navy, Staples, Kohls, etc. I got most of my Christmas shopping done in 1 day. It was a great experience and I will be doing it again. We really enjoyed all of the time with our families and we cannot wait until Christmas to see everyone again!

Stephanie has a job...finally!

I have been trying to find a job since we came home from Alex's training in Alabama, but no one is really hiring right now. Then, all of the sudden, this Monday, I had two interviews and they both offered me a job. I was so excited and I finally decided to accept one. I am now a H & R Block tax professional. The office is actually on the Air Force base and a couple of minutes from my house. I am really excited to finally start work. Being home alone is overrated.

New Additions to our Home

We have been gradually adding things to our house and I figured I would post some pictures. When we went down to Phoenix we picked up some new furniture from Alex's parents.
One of the things they gave us was a couch! We love it!Alex's grandma gave us this bookshelf and as you can see, it is almost full already!
I finally convinced Alex that we needed some curtains, so we put some up in our living room. We are starting to hang family pictures and our house is slowly becoming a home!

Christmas Time in the Fleshman Home

We both love Christmas! We have been counting down the days until we get to put up our Christmas tree and Christmas decorations for the first time! We made a quick Wal-Mart trip and made a few purchases and it is starting to feel like Christmas in our home!We each have our own stocking to go on our fireplace!I have been looking for a cute centerpiece for our table and my Grandma gave me a great idea for the holiday season. We put Christmas ornaments in a bowl for the centerpiece.
Alex was so excited to put the star on the tree!
We know its early to start Christmas decorations, but we didn't want to wait anymore. We had Christmas music playing in the background while we hung up ornaments (we had way more than we thought) and we had a great time!

Weekend Trip

After Halloween, Alex and his dad went to work on some projects. They built me and Alex a headboard (they had already built the matching end tables). Then, Alex welded some chain together to make a sign for his parents house. Alex really enjoyed getting back in the garage and building again. He hasn't had much time for that stuff since we moved. We had a great weekend, walking the dog, playing football in the park, helping to make Diane and Tim their own blog, and much more. We were all tired at the end of the weekend. Harry even feel asleep in all of our blankets. They came Friday night and left Monday morning. It was a pretty entertaining weekend for us. We love to have company. My grandparents visited first right after we moved in, so it has been awhile since we have had house guests.

Halloween Fun

Halloween night Alex's parents drove to New Mexico to visit us. They brought some masks for costumes and we had fun dressing up. Tim and AlexDiane and Stephanie

Harry (their dog)

Tim and Alex entertained the Trick-or-Treaters with a skit while passing out candy. The kids loved it (well there was a few that weren't so thrilled) and we had a great time. Now, the only problem is we bought way too much candy and we cannot stop eating it : ).

Arizona Trip

This is pretty much the longest either of us have been away from our families so we decided to make a weekend trip to Arizona to see everyone. It was a lot of fun! We spent the first night with Alex's parents. They even waited for us to get there (which was like 10PM) to have dinner! Then, we went to see Stephanie's parents and grandparents. We played with Stephanie's brothers pretty much the whole day. Alex strapped them in the truck.
We played volleyball in the truck that night.We let them take turns driving. Parents don't be mad, we made sure they were safe : ) Apparently, we had a little too much fun! After a long day, we took turns sleeping. The next day, we drove back to see Alex's parents and they gave us a lot of furniture to take back to New Mexico. We had a nice brunch there with Alex's grandma and aunt and then we drove back. It seemed too short and we cannot wait for Thanksgiving so we can see everyone again. We miss you guys!

We are finally home!

Well after 2 days and 22 hours of driving, we finally made it home! As much as I enjoyed being in the car listening to Alex's singing

I loved finally getting out of the car and coming back to our house.
We were pleasantly surprised at the gas prices. They went down at just the right time for our cross country trip.

Icarus

Icarus is a game that all the Air Force Lieutenants play here at training. Alex likes to say it is the Air Force's way of ruining dodge ball by making it more complicated.
Alex has played a few times since we have been here and his team hasn't done so well. This is his sad face after losing a game.But he won today so that was exciting! Also, today, he was running full speed and he accidentally ran into a girl, more like tackled her. He felt really bad, and the girl was obviously mad because when they got up she looked ready to punch him. He looked a little scarred of her. It was pretty funny.