Our Week In Southern California

I started writing this last night and didn't finish because of the game last night. Before I go back to finishing this blog I must say how pissed/disappointed/frustrated so many other words I could use to describe how I feel about the Green Bay-Seattle game last night. The call was bullshit and everyone knows it. The NFL needs to take their heads out of their asses. These refs cost us the game and that is not ok. Rant over.

So...

It is so hard to come back after a week off. It was really nice for Derek and I to have a break from work, even though he was working that whole week, and it was nice for Alexis to have a break from daycare and spend all her time with us and my family and friends.

So I got off work early last Saturday so we left at around 2:30pm and got to Southern California at around 11:30pm. Alexis was asleep when we got there so we put her right to bed and stayed up for a little bit and hung out. I didn't get to see my niece very much when we first got there because she was asleep, but we got to hang out with my brothers, it was nice seeing them.

On Sunday we went to see my mom and my other brothers and they were so happy to see Alexis. Alexis was walking all over, no more crawling for her. My mom and brothers were so happy they got to see her walking. After visiting with my mom, Alex and baby came with us to my dad's shop because he was going to change our brakes and change our oil. It was so nice to get those things taken care of and really nice to see my dad again. Alexis did not like all the noise from my dad changing our brakes lol but she liked walking around the shop.

After we got done with that we went to the West Covina Westfield mall and finally got Alexis' ears pierced :) She was such a trooper, we gave her some Tylenol right before and she cried for maybe a minute and then was perfectly fine. I am so glad we went to Piercing Pagoda instead of Claire's, because I heard horror stories about them and had heard great things about Piercing Pagoda. The only thing that was not so great about her ear piercing was that we had picked out specific earrings, they were 14k white gold with little cubic zirconium and when the girl put the first earring in, they do it with a gun, it turns out the gun had the wrong earring! I was holding Alexis and the second the girl pierced her left ear she was crying and the girl asked me if I wanted her to re-pierce with the right earring. I was worried about Alexis being in more pain so I said no. She finished piercing her ears and told me that the company kept sending them the wrong earrings prepackaged in the guns and she kept apologizing; I know she felt really bad. In any other situation I would have complained and asked for my money back but all I cared about was Alexis not being in more pain and the earrings that she got actually cost more than what we paid, but I still don't really like them. They are 14k gold but they are yellow gold, which I don't really care for, and are in a butterfly shape with cubic zirconium. Alexis has to have these in for at least 6 weeks without taking them out and then I can put different ones in so it's not so bad, all that matters is that they are 14k gold to prevent any irritation. It has been really easy cleaning her ears, I do it when she's asleep in the morning and at night and even have done it when she is awake and she doesn't fight me. She also does not play with them or pull at them or anything, so it makes it that much easier. Here is my cutie with her earrings.

From Sunday afternoon till about Thursday I really did nothing lol, which really was the best part of my whole vacation. I got to sleep in and hang out and do absolutely nothing. I did go to the store with my mom and had lunch with my dad and things like that, but for the most part did nothing until Friday. Well I did spend a lot of time, as much as I could, with my little niece Harlow :) She was so precious and Alexis loved her, she was hugging on her and touching her hair. Here are some pictures.

Friday was a busy busy day. Derek and I went out and bought some baby gifts for the 3 newest baby girls in my life :) in the afternoon Amandalyn and I went baby clothes shopping so I finally got to meet little Aubrey and gave Amandalyn her gift :) I bought a ton of cute things for Alexis. She needed more clothes because she was pretty much all grown out of her clothes and needed some warmer clothes anyway. Here are some pictures of what I bought her.

I am so in love with the red coat and the brown boots. After shopping Derek, Alexis, and myself meet up with Magaly and Kathy for dinner. I missed my best friends so much so it was nice to see them again and Alexis loved spending time with them. We had fun catching up. Never a dull moment with Magaly and Kathy. Sadly I wasn't able to see Tabby, Sammy Bear or Rachel on this trip but we will be back down there for Christmas for sure, maybe for Thanksgiving.

So we were originally going to leave Sunday morning, but decided to leave Saturday in the early afternoon and cut the trip in half. The cruise control on Derek's car, for some reason has not been working for the last couple of weeks so he really needed a break. We stopped in Mesquite and stayed at the Virgin River hotel. It was nice to be able to cut the trip in half. We ate some food and hung out in the room, Alexis was walking all over, and we decided to go to the arcade and play some games an called it a night. We got Alexis some fun stuff with all the tickets we got :)

Well now that we are back from our trip I thought it would be harder to get back into the groove, but work was awesome today, especially because I got a raise :) So that was definitely something to look forward to. Also I sent a schedule change request. I currently work 8 hour days 5 days a week, usually more than that because I am always picking up extra hours. Well I really want to work 4 10 hour days so I put in a request to have Tuesdays off [I already have Sunday and Monday off] and work 10 hour days Wednesday-Saturday, so hopefully they approve it; I don't really care if it's Tuesday that I have off but it would be nice to have the 3 days off in row. I really want to be able to have Alexis home from daycare one more day of the week, right now she is going Tuesday-Friday so it would be nice to bring her down to 3 days which would save on daycare cost and would mean we get to spend more time together.

Well that is it for now, Enjoy :)