Me, 200 Miles and 2 Kids

Friday Baby Fox and I stopped by my parents since they had been gone all week and they were missing each other. Baby Fox LOVES going over there, mostly because he is center of attention and pretty much gets what ever he wants, but that's what Grandparents are for right?

Wrestling is a must

Ampa teaching him on to pin someone and to count to 3

When we got home, this beauty was awake and ready for dinner.

Was thinking of using this for her 1st birthday invite, thoughts?  She's a little crossed eyed, should I keep looking?

 

 

Saturday we left Mr. at home and drove 100 miles north to go to my cousin's daughters (my second cousin? Although we refer to them as nieces and nephews) birthday. Note to self: Bring snap and go stroller with you ALWAYS even if you don't think you'll use it. It would have been handy when at mile 60, Baby Fox says "I HAVE TO PEE!!" and I have to pull over find somewhere to use the restroom...but can't leave Mini Fox in the car, so had to carry the whole car seat into the bathroom - cause let's face it no way to hold a 10 month old and help a 3.5 year old pee. But we survived and finally made it to the party...

Guess the theme? I'll give you one hint...super popular kids movie right now...If you guess Frozen you would be correct. I'll give you the details tomorrow, so come back! Everything was PERFECT!

The Birthday girl and Elsa

If you can't tell, his eyes are close, he is so cute when he closes his eyes

Next up, cupcakes!

Baby Fox's favorite thing at a party

Could be one of my most favorite pictures of the tree of us

Me and my cousins - Me, Cousin #3, Cousin #4

Baby Fox just wanted to sit in this chair and read

Cousin Cuties, hanging out, getting a picture of the 4 of them...hard!

We went to a REALLY late lunch, they only had snack foods...so we went to Corner Bakery...3 woman 4 children...people moved tables when we got there.

Baby Fox got this hand sticky thing and just wanted to play with it. I told him he needed to take a nap...this is him pretending to sleep

Don't worry we're in traffic going 0 MPH

He finally fell asleep! (still going 0 MPH)

 Home in the driveway and both kids have napped, happy and ready to see Daddy!

You can just see Mini Fox's head peaking through her car seat

When I went in to take Baby Fox to the bathroom before we went to bed, this was him, totally out cold.

See his pillow? Yep he jacked our silk pillow sham, dry clean only...he's love it and makes him happy, yes you can keep that pillow as long as you want, who cares that our bed is uneven.

Sunday I went to Burke Williams for  Spa day, oh it was glorious! I can get used to that life!

I blow dry my hair faster than them, then asked for a picture, LOL

When I walked in the door, Baby Fox says, "Mommy, Mommy can Daddy and Me go swimming? Can we go swimming?! Can we?" How could I say no? So they went swimming while I made dinner.

He's getting so good at swimming, we really should get him into some formal lessons before summer is over! We're so busy on the weekends, maybe we'll have to go after work hours...

One last picture of the night before bed:

Okay two:

Mini Fox is pushing a car down the slide to Baby Fox

Love her chubby little legs!

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather for Mommy Moments

and with Bella & Lisa

I Love Rice and My Dad - Fixing your Wet Phone

Remember when I told you this on Monday? Well guess what? It worked! I know you have all been dying to know. I'm so happy! yay!

I know 163 unread message, crazy right?

So now that I have that behind me, I'm going to let you guys know how I brought my phone back from the dead. So if this ever happens to you, actually I take that back, this will never happen to you because WHO puts their phone in a cup of water!?! So this is how my Dad helped me save my phone. Dad always to the rescue.

How to Save Your Phone When You Drop Place it in Water

Step 1: Freak out that Siri just stopped talking to you and when you look down to see why realize you've put your phone in the cup of water you told yourself was a stupid thing to bring cause something will probably happen.

Step 2: Denial that you're phone is broken, you just got your first smart phone and have never had previous problem with water, why now?!

Step 3: Parking car and start vigorously shaking phone out, wondering how in the hell can this much water get in a phone in 1.5 inches of water?!

Step 4: Start walking towards the hospital (no this didn't put me in the hospital, I was visiting someone, they're recovering well), using my maxi skirt and shaking my phone into it like I'm a pack a day smoker prepping the first smoke of the pack, you know what I'm talking about...

Step 5:  Tell anyone who will listen that I'm holding a dead phone walking...

Step 6: Walk into said hospital room and rant about my phone being broken, then realize, shit I should ask how the person is doing who is actually sitting in a hospital bed. Hospital person always trumps dead phone, always.

Step 7: Dad tells you to take out SIM card, cause when he dropped his phone into a gutter (our family has issues), his phone told him (literally, a message popped up on his screen) to take the SIM card out.

Step 8: Have to find something small enough to fit into that little hole in the iPhone to get out the SIM card, hospital person says, hey I saw a paperclip on the ground over by room #XXX while I was out walking my laps.

Step 9: Get SIM card out and realize it's okay and that it didn't get wet, phew!

Step 10: Dad says that we need rice and that the hospital had rice for lunch, he's going down to ask for some (not cooked, obviously, but Mr. did have to double check that one. We figured they had cooked rice at lunch, they must have uncooked rice for us to use)

Step 11: Put phone in bag of rice, wait impatiently for over a day for phone to hopefully dry out. The good part of that is I figured out why our landline isn't working (yep we still have one of those, much to Mr.'s protest), what if I needed to call for help, it made me nervous, the whole hour and half till Mr. got home from work and we would have a phone again.

Step 12: Take phone out of rice, try to turn it on...see the apple sign and scream/jump up and down like an idiot and so happy that the money you had been saving up for a new camera will not need to be used for a new phone!

So that's how you do it people, here it is simplified

Shake the phone like it's your business to get water out → put in bag of rice → wait → turn on phone and hope that it goes back on, you only have one chance.

Side note: Water is an electrical conductor, so if you turn on the phone and there is still water in there and the water is touching a grounding spot and a power spot they will short together and your phone will definitely be broken (I just totally nerded out there), so don't turn on your phone until you really know it's dry!

Any of you try this? Did it work for you?

This picture has NOTHING to do with my story, other than she's drinking water and I put my phone in a glass of water...I just thought it was ridiculously cute and thought you would want to see it.

Her first time drinking water from a straw

Happy Friday!

P.S. In 8 days I will have driven over 1000 miles...yes I was in the car a lot this past week.

Keeping Your Marriage Alive with a Toddler

I am co-hosting a "One Year and Beyond" link up, and this weeks topic is "Keeping Your Marriage Alive with a Toddler"

After two kids it's so easy to fall into the daily routine of work, eat dinner, give kids bath, get ready for the next day, sleep, repeat. My husband and I have been together for 11 years...hey wait, now that I think about it, we started dating on this day 11 years ago...crazy to think about. We were together for 7 years (5 of them married) before we had kids, so we had a really good chunk of time without them.

We had been dating for 5ish months in this picture

People say that after you have kids your marriage really changes, and while I agree with that, for us it was just the next step, we were ready for kids, we decided when we got married that we wanted to wait 5 years before having kids, so when we did have them, it wasn't a surprise. It really helped that we both know our strengths and we sort of just fall into what our baby duties were going to be without having to talk about it.

At my baby shower I'm about 32 weeks pregnant here.

Not arguing how to raise your child also helps. We are both in 100% agreement on how to raise our children, discipline, eating, etc. It also helps that Mr. is really easy going and always said, what I says goes, mostly he doesn't have a strong opinion when it comes to certain things, he just goes with the flow of how I want things (makes things really easy when we're not fighting over when we need to feed our kids).

Communication is huge too. We are constantly telling each other EVERYTHING. Every small thing the children do, everything that happens during the day. I think it helps to keep us close, to know that the other person saw some crazy person reading a newspaper while driving to work or that Baby Fox hit his sister earlier in the day or that Mini Fox cried when her brother left to go with the grandparents. It keeps us connected, keeps us talking to each other and most importantly keeps us on the same page. As soon as one of us doesn't agree with something, we talk about it. Hey you know when you did such and such? Well I thought that wasn't the best way to handle it...and then we talk about how we would do it differently. We don't hold grudges, once something has been talked about and put behind us we never talk about it again.

This was my birthday dinner - 10 days before Mini Fox came. We knew it would be our last time going out on a date for a while.

You're probably thinking, what does this have to do with how to keep your marriage alive right? Well for us, once the kids go down, we've already talked about the kids and what happened that day, so it's all about us. We usually get a good hour or two before we have to go to bed. We have shows that we like to watch together. We don't use the phone, computer or other distracting things, we always know we get those few hours before bedtime. Hence I get no sleep (cause I wake up at 4:30am), but it's worth it to have that time with Mr. Important to me.


We also try to go on dates, every Wednesday (most every) my parents come over to watch the kids for a hour and a half so we can go to the gym together to go rock climbing. It's something small, but it's just for us and it's weekly, we're not going out to dinner, or movies, but we get to do something that we used to do a lot before kids, and we love it. It really rejuvenates us on those Wednesdays to help us get through the week, us time.

Climbing together - Wednesday gym date

Bottom line: If you're communicating, when you do have those few precious moments of downtime, you're not spending it resenting each other but can really enjoy each others company like you did before the kids came.

One Year and Beyond is back!!  We just couldn't stay away from this awesome toddler series.  We've gotten so much positive response so far.  Motherhood can be difficult especially with a toddler at home.  So we're here to talk toddler issues, mom to mom.  We've got a great group of mamas who are offering their advice on getting through those challenging times with their child.  Be sure to check out their blogs and then link up your own post on the topic with us below!

Like a Morning Cup of Coffee// From Here to Eternity// The Not Quite Military Wife//

A Cowboy's Life// My Delicious Adventure// Sadie Sky Boutique// Meet the Sullivan's//

Love and Life//  Foxy's Domestic Side// Everyday Love// Life of Faith

July 10:  Keeping your marriage alive with a toddler

July 17:  Favorite summer toddler activities

July 24:  Helping Your Toddler to Communicate (Words, emotions, etc.)

July 31:  Dealing with Separation Anxiety

Aug 7:    Car Trip Necessities

Aug 14:  Deciding when the time is right for baby #2 (and/or how to handle these questions)

Aug 21:  Tricks for eating out with your toddler

Aug 28:  Feeling confident as a mom (How to feel this way, Your struggle with, etc.)
 

An InLinkz Link-up

Fingers Crossed, Please, Please, Please Work!

First things first...I dropped my phone in a cup of water...I was driving and thought I was putting it in the empty cup holder, clearly I didn't...I'm so sad and I hope the rice thing works...keeping fingers crossed. Okay now that's out of the way, let's get to the outfits!

Last week of the  Summer Style Me with Alison,  here's week 1, week 2 and week 3. I'm sad to see it go, but with me working 5 days a week, it was really me subbing every outfit, but gave me some good work outfits to wear. Like day 17, I like day 17 this round. Hey looking at all the pictures, what's up with day 19? The wrong arm is bent, apparently I have a stance...and Day 19 I got it all wrong.

I know you're dying for the break down so here we go:

Day 17

This is seriously the most comfy sweater ever, I want it in every color, is that weird? OH and they're on sale now, only $25...darn it I paid full price!

Striped Tee - Target, Jeans - Loft (old), Sweater - Nordstroms (Currently on sale!), Wedges- Nordstroms (currently unavailable, but might come back, so keep checking), Earrings - Target

Day 18

This is sort of like outfit from Day 1 except I am wearing flats and a necklace, but it totally changes the feel of the outfit. I was slightly cold when I left for work so I threw on the jean jacket (JJA I tell ya.

Pink Jeans - White House Black Market (old), Shirt - Target, Jean Jacket - Old Navy, Sandals - Target (old), Necklace - Jane.com

Day 19

Happy Independence Day! This is what I wore to our Fourth of July Party. Let me tell you about this top. I was getting party supplies for Baby Fox's Half Birthday and Ross was right next to door to Party City. Hey I've never been in a Ross so I quickly went in. Now I remember why I avoid these stores, not because they don't have great deals, but because there is just SO Much that I feel overwhelmed and then walk out...is that strange? Anyway I didn't have anything to wear for the 4th, but saw this and while it was a size I don't normally wear, it fit perfect, I think it was meant to be.

Wait for it...the back is awesome isn't it?

Day 20

Maxi Skirt = Pajama Bottoms...don't you agree? I love wearing it because it feels like I am wearing comfy clothes, add a tee shirt, simple necklace and a fedora, makes for a pretty awesome outfit. Will definitely be repeating this one! Especially with all of my newly acquired maxi skirts.

Day 21

Last day, sniff sniff. It was ridiculously hot, think 95° so I opted to wear shorts instead of the palazzo pants. Sorry for the super wrinkly shorts, this is the end of the day, and we had been in the car a lot.

Shirt - Nordstroms, Shorts - Loft, Shoes - Toms (on sale!), Necklace - Jane.com

I loved the summer challenge, while I didn't get to wear all of the pieces and still haven't found a black maxi that looks good on me, it was fun to get to know the other challenge ladies. Speaking of which go check some of them out, they're all pretty awesome.

Shoe to Shiraz | Just Jordan | Blog by a Herzog | RSquared | Mishaps and Mayhem of Solitary Life |

Grumbling Grace | 2 Teens & Their Mama | The Kelly's |

A Little Lovely Wardrobe | Confessions of a Frumpy Mommy | 

Family Love Inspiration Education | A Little Bit of Life, Love & Fashion |

Foxy's Domestic Side | My Running Stitches | Leading a Colourful Life |

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

Another Photo Shoot - 4th Of July

A few days late, but during Baby Fox's first year I did a themed photo shoot for each month, that way when I made the calendar at the end of the year, I had a picture all set to go for each month, genius I tell ya. Okay not really, I did the themed photo shoots (cause when you have 1 kid you have ample amount of time and he was always so patient with me) and then in December when I was trying to figure out what to get our parents, I thought, hey lets do a calendar. So those pictures I had been taking throughout the year really came in handy.

I have been doing the same for Mini Fox, and have been trying to do the same photos that I did for Baby Fox, see here, here and here

So without further adeu here are Mini Fox's Fourth of July photos.

These are the ones we sent out to family and friends:

These I just really liked:

Baby Fox wanted to get in too, but was only patient enough for a few photos, non of which turned out, of course :)

And here are the ones for Baby Fox when he was just 6 months old.

Lesson, need more than 15 minutes to do a photo shoot with Mini Fox. That's all the time I had before we had to leave for our 4th of July plans, super last minute, mostly I forgot until the morning of...haha. Oops! And Baby Fox wasn't crawling yet, so it was much easier to get him to stay put...hehe.