87,600 hours and counting...

87,600 hours is 10 years worth of hours, which is how long Alfred and I have been together as of October 7th.  We don't typically celebrate our "dating" anniversary, but 10 years is something to celebrate, don't you think?  It's crazy to think that Alfred and I started off just as co-workers (not even really friends) at Old Navy all those years ago.  Then that co-worker status eventually turned into friends which turned into more than friends, and then over the years turned into 2 kids and a move to Arizona.  He seriously is a dream come true to me and I can't imagine there being a better man out there for me. To celebrate our 10 years, I gave him this rose gold/navy watch...

with this engraved on the back of it...

"I've loved you for 87,600 hours... and counting"

And Alfred got me this beautiful rose gold watch...

which he purchased from the same guy that I got his watch from.  And THAT GUY became THAT GUY who, through casual conversation with Alfred, realized Alfred's wife (me) was the same girl he helped earlier in the week and decided that he couldn't just keep that information to himself.  Yup.  He actually said the words "Hey, I think I helped your wife earlier this week."  Not cool.  But he didn't show Alfred which watch I got him and of course he didn't know it was going to be engraved, so there was still some element of surprise to the whole thing.

We took a week vacation in order to send my mom to Florida for some R&R and to spend Alec's "Fall Break" with him so we didn't actually get a night out for our anniversary or anything. That's okay. We don't need a fancy dinner, wine or nights out to remember how much we love each other and how happy we are to have one another.  For our vacation, we considered driving to San Diego with the kids just to get out the house for a couple of days, but then this happened...

 

Her name is Peppa. As in "Salt and Peppa" or "Peppa the Pig" depending on which age group you are talking to. She is a 2 month old shih tzu/chinese crested mix and she couldn't have come at a more perfect time.  Lilly has been gone for about 16 months so we have all been toying around with the idea of a new dog for a little while now.  A home without a pet feels kind of empty.  Even my mom has said she wanted a dog added to the family a couple of times. 

On the Friday before we went on vacation, I did a little research on low shed/no shed dog breeds (which shih tzu's are; and chinese crested are hairless, so they are too) and pet adoption in the Phoenix area.  Just to gather some ideas but nothing too serious.  Our community has a Facebook page that keeps us all up to date on community events, happenings, etc.  But we, as members of the community, can go in and post items for sale or things we are looking for on there too.  Well, Saturday morning, as soon as Jolie was down for a nap, I had seen that someone was selling 3 puppies on there.  Alfred, Alec and I (we left Jolie with my mom) immediately went over to "take a look" and as you can see, the "look" turned into us bringing the cuteness home with us.  It couldn't have been more perfect.  

It was all meant to be... just the day before, I was looking into pet adoption and researching her exact breed. We didn't have to travel more than 4 blocks away to buy her.   She didn't come with shots so we had to go get her those along with food, toys and a crate.  There went the majority of our vacation money.  But it was money well spent!  As expected, she's had a couple of "accidents" in the home, but overall, she is doing pretty good.  Just like a baby, she gets up once a night to go potty and play but she goes back to bed pretty quickly.  Although right now she weights a whopping 1.8 lbs (and can fit into my sweater pocket), the vet said she will end up being around 12 lbs - 15 lbs at full maturity.  She has the cutest bark on the planet and plays really well with the kids, who love her.  We all love her. She really is a great addition to our family.

She loves to sit on my shoulder.
 I keep on telling her that one day she will be too big for that!

 

Well that's how our vacation started. And since she is such a new part of the family, it made it a little more difficult to leave the house for extended periods of time.  

But we still had some fun.  We took the kids to Chuck-E-Cheese one day and the kids had the whole entire place to themselves...

We spent a couple of days hanging out at the park across the street from our house...

But our biggest outing was to the Phoenix Zoo to enjoy the absolute perfect weather.  First, I must mention that the last time we all went to the zoo together was in Houston back in 2012.  Alec was just about 3 years old, and Jolie was about 2 months old and our little family looked like this...

I miss her being this small.

My chubby cheeked baby boy.

And here we are, present time with Alec at 4 years 6 months old and Jolie at 21 months...

Our "tour guide" reading the map.
He made sure we saw all of the animals he wanted to see!

I cannot get over how mature he looks in this picture.

My babies.

My World.  My Loves.  Our Family.

Checking out the flamingos.

This is what 10 years of happiness looks like.

Daddy's girl.

"Guess what day it is..."
 It was actually Friday, but you get the reference.

What you are witnessing here is our kids pulling up their shirts to flash all those in the immediate area
and Alec slyly picking his nose then wiping his "findings" on his sister's arm. Good stuff.  

Doesn't Alec look excited?

 

 

They totally did this on their own.
They love each other  (most of the time).

 

Alec feeding the giraffe.

The giraffes are my FAVORITE!

My pretty princess.

 

Now that we live in a farming community, Alec LOVES tractors
and can name a whole lot of them specifically.  

Handsome boy.

My boys. 

My sonshine.

They had such a great time, especially Jolie who walked by herself everywhere and constantly asked "what's that" in efforts to expand her already large animal vocabulary.  She was such a daddy's girl that day, constantly wanting to be held or carried by him.  He was a trooper though and complied with her every demand (for the most part). Alec was devastated when we left and insisted that we missed some of the animals.  The both of them were out like a light by the time we left the parking lot.  The remainder of our vacation was spent around our local area for shopping, going out for lunch and just hanging around the house with the kids.  

I SWEAR she put herself in there and I DID NOT LOCK IT (for long). Ha!

She LOVES her big girl cup with a straw.

My babies amaze me daily.  Alec is maturing so much and becoming a small boy (no longer a toddler) right before our eyes.  He is funny, active, intelligent, inquisitive, independent and so much fun to be around.  He LOVES singing (his favorites right now are Old McDonald, B-I-N-G-O, Twinkle Twinkle, and Itsy Bitsy Spider) and he asks a million questions a day.  His favorite questions to ask are "What's that?" immediately followed by "What does it do?"  I'm sure he picked those up at school, which he has asked to go back to almost every day of this Fall Break.  He loves helping us around the house and taking on chores.  He fills our days with happiness and laughter and he really is an awesome kid.

 

By FAR the best pajamas I have ever bought him. 

He has also been a great help with Peppa wanting to take her out to go potty, play with her and put her in her crate when we leave.  Although he loves Peppa and is a great big brother to her, he is still only 4 years old and doesn't really understand how fragile she is.  Thus, this happened...

Our fault, mostly.  We weren't on "puppy patrol" like we usually are when the kids are playing with her and Alec got a little too rough with her. Poor Peppa has a partial fracture in her wrist and will be bandaged up for about 2 weeks and on pain meds for about 3 days.  Although we were saddened by Peppa's pain, we were understanding to the fact that it was an accident and he did not intentionally mean to hurt her.  

What we were upset about was that for the first time in Alec's life, he told a bold lie.  Of course, like any kid, he has told little funny lies like telling us something is red when he knows it's blue or telling us he's "doing nothing" when he is playing with something he's not supposed to be playing with. But this time, when we originally went outside to find out what was going on with Peppa, Alec responded with "it was an accident" but didn't/wouldn't give us details.  We asked a bunch of questions such as "Did you hit Peppa? Did you kick Peppa?  Did you throw Peppa?  Did you run over Peppa with your bike?" etc.  To each of those, he either didn't respond at all or responded with a "no."

Alfred then asked him "Did Jolie hurt Peppa?" to which Alec finally looked up at as and said "yes." He then created this story how Jolie pushed Peppa into the grass and then ran away. We knew immediately that he was lying for a couple of reasons; 

1. The SECOND Jolie does anything wrong at any other time, Alec is quick to tattle tell on her.  
2. Anytime Alec does something he wasn't suppose to he usually apologizes by saying "It was an accident" just like he said the moment we stepped outside when we heard Peppa crying.  
3. Jolie was clear on the other side of the porch, no where near Peppa when we got outside. 

We let him think that we bought that story for a little while.  Later that night, I sat down with Alec and finally got him to confess that he was the one who hurt Peppa.  I am slightly hurt by the whole lying event, but I also know that he's about that age where it may start to occur.  The hardest part of it is that we tell him that lying isn't good and try to explain it to him, but he doesn't actually comprehend the concept of lying or understand that what he did is called lying. We did make him apologize to Peppa for hurting her and to Jolie for lying about her.  Peppa is adjusting well to her wrapped up leg and plays like nothing is even there.  

In a post I wrote back in July, I spoke about Jolie's ever growing vocabulary and how it amazes me all the time.  Alfred and I look at each other with dropped jaws frequently because of how much Jolie knows/speaks/sings/expresses herself.  She can sing Old McDonald (my favorite part is how she says "E I E I O", Wheels on the Bus, Twinkle Twinkle and a couple of other songs in their entirety.  She can speak 4 and 5 word sentences such as "Daddy/mommy, I don't want any" or "I don't like it", "Mommy, where are you?", "I want apple juice, please", etc.  She can also count to 10 and sing her ABC's by herself and can almost count to 10 in Spanish.  She tells us exactly what she wants to watch, eat or do throughout the day and has very good manners by saying "Thank you, mommy/daddy" when she gets what she wants. 

She understands practically everything we tell her or ask her to do.  She loves to give kisses and she now says "I love you" pretty clearly (melts my heart every time). Her and Alec have full conversations about TV shows, music and animals.  She is very animated and friendly, frequently saying "hi" to people who pass by and asking them for high-fives.  She can be sassy at times, refusing to let me brush her hair or get her dressed.  She adores Alec and wants to do/say everything he does.  She truly is a ray of sunshine and we love her to pieces.

Spending these past 7 days with the love of my life and our babies has truly put a lot of things into perspective.  You learn a lot about yourself and others when you have kids. You especially learn a lot about the person you decided to have those children with.  Marriage isn't easy and neither is raising children.  But it's all a little bit easier when you have awesome kids and an incredible husband like I do.  And they make all the hard stuff worth it.  In the end, loving them is all that matters.

Goodnight.