9 Happy Years

Last year I posted this about our wedding anniversary, so this year I thought, since this is our 9 year anniversary I would write 9 things why I our marriage works.

But first, this is one of my absolute favorite photos from our wedding.

1.  Faith

When we got engaged we discussed Mr. converting to the Catholic faith, but decided that we were going to wait till after we got married so that we could go through the process together. So we're in a meeting with our priest and he asks us when do you want to get married? (our choice was going to be before Lent because you can't get married during and Mr. didn't want to wait those 40 days to get married). So I'm about to tell him our date of January 29th or February 5th, and Mr. blurts out that he wants to go through the process of converting before we get married, say what?! It turned out to be a wonderful experience with my Dad being his sponsor.

Mr. recieved 4 sacraments in  1 week, talk about holy. Love this picture of Mr. getting communion at our wedding, that smile.

 

The Fox kids getting baptized.

 I won't go into preachy mode, but it was important to us for our kids to get baptized. I think our religion molds our children to who they are going to be, always having Jesus in their heart, keeping the light within them lite for others to see and spread the word and message.

2. We can have fun doing absolutely anything like taking a 1400 mile East Coast road trip with no music (Washington D.C to Vermont and back with stops in NYC and Philly)

Fact: Since Mr. and I have met we have never listened to anything on the radio, I think the total amount of time we've listened to the radio while in the car together is probably less then 10 minutes. We'll occasionally want the other to hear a favorite song, etc. But even then we don't listen to the whole song. Now when we get in the car if the radio is on, it just feels weird.

You should try it for one car trip, it really gets you talking and being able to be in silence with your own thoughts and really enjoy the scenery of where you are going.

3. We do little things that we're not asked to do, but do anyway because we know it's going to make the other happy.

Mr. is fixing the squeaky swing set at our park because it was really bothering me every time I pushed Baby Fox in it.

I'm making dinner while doing a workout video. See my feet down there, can't stop 'em. I want to feed my family, but also want to workout, so why not do both.

4.When we do travel it's best if I drive, and that we have a GPS with us this is me driving when we were in Barbados

This is me driving on our trip from number 1.

And the GPS we had to wait for an extra hour to get, putting us on the road much later then we anticipated. Yep that was before our phones had GPS, seems crazy now (wait I still don't have that), but this thing literally saved our marraige! I had printed out directions to all of our locations, I know I printed out driving directions from Washington D.C. to Vermont!

5. We each have our own hobbies that the other supports.

I have my blogging, fashion posts, crafts

He takes my outfit posts for me

Jeans - White House Black Market (on mega sale!), Shirt - Loft, Shoes - Toms, Necklace and bracelet - Francesca's Collection

 My favorite part of this shirt? The polka dot underlay, yep it came that way, cool huh?

 
I'd like to point out that Baby Fox picked out my toe nail polish and even helped me take the old polish off and put the new polish on

My dad happened to be over picking up Baby Fox and I insisted he get in a picture with me. And yes he just dresses like this everyday, he's retired and wears clothes like he still works. Guess old habits are hard to break. He's really involved with Church, he probably had a church thing yesterday morning.

Baby Fox wanted in on the action too, am I a lucky girl or what?

Mr. has his music writing (when he's done writing his current song, he said I could post it here, get excited!) and his choir stuff.

I asked Mr. about the man in the back with the patch on his eye, and he told me that he's always had the patch on his eye...

6. Raising our Children

We are almost always on the same page.

Discipline for example: This is the one and only tantrum Baby Fox has ever thrown, and when we did it, we laughed at him and took pictures. He realized that it wasn't working and promptly stopped crying and came to give us a hug.

I believe he was crying because he wanted a grape and we didn't have any, something silly like that.

 His first time out

He kept turning off the lights in the kitchen while I was trying to make dinner

Manners is really important to us, he says please and thank you, says excuse me when he wants to talk and we're talking. Sometimes people say, wow he's so polite and we take that as a compliment to us, that is how we raise him to respect others and in return they will respect him.

7. Mostly we make the most of our time together and have a ton of fun!

 

8.  We do fun things for just us, without the kids.

Date Nights

Weekends Away

9. Family is EVERYTHING

Our family is important to us and we try to see them every chance we get.

Most of my cousins with their kids

Making sure Baby Fox gets time with his Great Grandmother before she passed away

Cousins getting together for Grandma, one of her favorite days, all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren in one place.

 

Flying to Chicago to see my cousin get married (I'm 22 weeks pregnant)

Or driving over a hour away for some cousin time

These are just some of the reasons our marriage works for us. You know you've been married a long time when you have a song and dance where we can get a task done each taking on tasks that need to happen without actually telling the other person what you're doing. LIke in the kitchen we can just get stuff done, each doing what they're good at and in 5 minutes everything is done and we still haven't said a word to each other. I can't imagine spending my days with anyone else, and am excited for what the future holds. Hopefully lots of traveling!

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather,  Because Shanna Said So, Get Your Pretty On, The Pleated Poppy, Tucker Up  and Bethany and Meghan

The World Through Baby Fox's Lens

Baby Fox got a camera for Christmas, yep a real honest to goodness camera, none of those kids cameras. We didn't think he would go for that, so we got him a real camera, and it happened to come in orange (his favorite color), double bonus.

Here are a few pictures that I took off of his camera, so appropriate for a 3 year old. 

His fingers always seem to get in the way

His bulldozer, prized possession

Already taking selfies, really close up

One of his favorite stuffed animals/blacket, he calls him Puppybear (there's that finger again)

Best Weekend

We had the best weekend. It was just us doing a little of this and a little of that, but in total, it was a great weekend with family and friends. I had Friday off, so I met up with some friends for a park play date.

Baby Fox needed a little rest, what better place than Mommy's lap.

Mini Fox did this for the first 30 or so minutes

 

When she woke up, she was ready to play! Or look like a movie star hiding from her public. Please no pictures.

Baby Fox and his little friend Ms. J, they had a blast together

When we got home Baby Fox wanted to eat lunch outside

Then that night, I had a Mom's Night In, we went to a friends house and just talked and ended up doing our nails at an Ikea kid table. Nope I didn't change, we're all Mom's. OH and while we were there, there was an earthquake. That's the second on that I've felt this month, strange, maybe the BIG one is coming? It's been 20 years since the last one...hmmm...???

Saturday I made Baby Fox some chocolate/butterscotch chip pancakes, he thought they were pretty awesome. We had to tell him that they were for special occasions and not to expect this sort of breakfast every morning.

Then my Aunt and Uncle came over for lunch, they were picking up some of our baby equipment/clothes for their son and his girlfriend.

My aunt playing golf with Baby Fox, you know it's love when she leaves her perfectly awesome Mexican food on the table to play a round of golf with the little, when she was starving.

After nap time this happened.

You wonder what Baby Fox is doing? Well they kept saying, "the weather forecast says it looks like rain"and then they would shoot the water gun in the air, he was trying to catch the "rain" in his mouth

Sunday they went swimming again, you can see how our summer is going to go..

She hung out with me, while I took a lot of pictures of her

then we headed over to a different Aunt and Uncle's house for dinner. Colton got to play with his little cousin. He actually thinks that she lives there because she's always there when we are there.

Love that my kids get to play with their cousin. Madi had so much fun kissing and loving on "the baby" Looks like Mini Fox enjoyed the hugs.

Then the kids did this for a long while, they have the most fun together. They are 6 months apart, and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE watching them grow up and play together.

 

And that was our weekend. This next weekend we're headed to Big Bear, can't wait to see my bestie and her family and get some hiking and maybe some snow time in.

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather 
Also linking up with Carly and Molly

 

TBT: House Edition - Guest Room

If you missed any of the previous TBT: House Editions click here.

Next room up, the guest room. This was one of the last rooms to get painted, since we were living in this room, while we were painting the other rooms.

So which color of the rainbow was this room you might ask?

That's right there was an accent wall of deep red, the other part was this the ugliest brown color you can imagine. The pictures don't really show you how ugly it really was.

We decided to paint this room the color that pretty much all of downstairs was getting, but like all the other rooms, we had to first prime this room. Ah, much better...a blank canvas.

 I am killing this look, throw away paper Home Depot hat (backwards of course, cause why would you wear it forward?), shorts I found in the boys department when I was in high school, and doesn't everyone paint in flip flops?

Just keep painting, just keep painting, my life every daylight hour. It's hard to paint when your natural light goes away, you can't really tell what's been painted and what hasn't, surprisingly.

The finished product, much better! although this lighting makes it look green, it's actually a nice tan color.

As our Christmas gift that year, my parents gave us a bed (minus the mattress), curtains and roman shades.

I was really pregnant at this point, and wasn't allowed on the ladders to help. I was a really good picture taker and pointer.

 We decided that since this room has the french doors on it, that if people were spending the night that they were going to want some privacy, so we decided to put drapes on them, so they could be drawn at night for privacy.

Apparently my mom likes to stand in that pose. FYI: my mom and I are exactly the same height

 Next week, I'll show you the kids rooms and this guest room all finished and decorated.

Linking up with Nicole

How We Got Dumped

I never thought I would do this, jean jacket with jeans that don't quite match, but I think it works.

Jeans - Jolt (size down for these, they stretch out, trust me), Shirt - Old Navy (softest most comfortable shirt ever!), shoes - Nordstroms (most comfy shoes ever, said this girl, who I believed and bought two pairs). So basically this is the most comfortable outfit ever and I need to wear this everyday.

Mr. is taking pictures and making me laugh

 

 And what would an outfit post be without my little photobomber?

 In case you wanted to know, his shirt has a picture of a hotdog and a mustard bottle and it says "best friends"

Now onto some random things:

• A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Mr.'s birthday. His gray hair is coming in fast and furious, he keeps telling me I'm making him go grey, I keep telling him that he was young when I met him, it has nothing to do with me? In any case, I sort of like my man with a little salt and pepper, what do you think?

 I love, love, love this photo!

• Mini Fox is joining in on the crazy at our house

• The best thing to happen to me in the last 3 months? Upgrading our internet speed and getting streaming netflix. Seriously, why did it take us this long? Oh yea, let me tell you a story of how Blockbuster broke up with us we broke up with Blockbuster.

•  We've had blockbuster mail (like netflix), since the beginning, think 2005. Yeah we had it for that long, we had been grandfathered into some of the by mail subscription stuff. We felt a connection, like we had to keep going, we were fiercely loyal, but the past year or so, it was harder and harder to get the title movies that we wanted. Even the older movies were hard to come by. Fast forward to December (yea like 3 months ago), we decided to finally break things off with Blockbuster, saying that it wasn't fulfilling us any more, so with heavy heart I logged onto our Blockbuster account, only to find out that 1 week prior they had already broken up with us. It said something like, due to something or other we've decided to stop the by mail subscription, as of December 11th you no longer have this subscription, you have 30 days to return your existing DVD, else you will be charged the full amount for the DVD. Say what? No, no, we were breaking up with you, you can't just leave a note. I feel so cheated.

           But now I can watch movies, like Safe Haven, on my laptop, while cooking, BEST THING 
           EVER!

Linking up with Because Shanna Said So, Get Your Pretty On, The Pleated Poppy and Tucker Up