Been a few days...

And a few crazy days they have been!

We had our friends, Liz and Dan come and visit us for a day on Thursday. Liz and I had a good time hitting up fabric stores. I got some adorable pink fabrics at Hancock for $2/yd! SCORE! We had a good time eating at Hula Hut. It was great to be able to take the restless toddlers (they have a 2 year old little girl) out on the pier to look at the boats and the lake. Delicious food too of course!
And we finished the evening off by watching Wipeout. If you have not watched this yet, you should!

Sadly, I had to spend an hour or so dealing with Alex that night. He woke up crying and when I went up, I discovered blood on his blanket and pillow. I initially thought it was just a tooth breaking through that had been irritated when his teeth were brushed. Upon further inspection, I discovered a good sized open sore on his cheek. I don't know if he bit it or what, but since it was hurting, he kept sticking his fingers in there and biting on it. Definitely not helping buddy. We drugged him up and I laid down with him in our bed until he finally went to sleep at 10. Luckily it seems much better now.

On Friday I was busy getting stuff put together for the digital scrapbooking class I was helping with for Super Saturday the next day.
I was also looking up Honda Odessey's on CL just to see what kinds of prices I could find out of curiosity. I found an '04 with leather and a DVD player with 104k miles on it (it's a honda... jon's at 144k on his '96 accord with no major problems) for 8500. We figured our car would be about that much for a trade in with the body damage it has from our move, so Jon told me to meet him at CarMax to get an appraisal on it to see what they would take it for.
We went down there and they would take it for 8k, but they didn't have really any cars for less than 10k.
We went to get some dinner and ice cream (hooray for 2 for 1 coupons! We ate and had ice cream for $10!) and then went to see if the dealership that had the $8500 Honda was open. We got there and it wasn't, so we came home and decided to go look at it first thing in the morning.
We called the guy to see when they open and that we wanted to come look at the Odessey and he said that he had sold it that day!!! BOO!

So we looked around on CL a little more and found an '03 with 70k miles for 9700.

So while I went and did my thing at Super Saturday, Jon went and looked at the van and we decided to go for it since we could still get a good price out of our Malibu and we would end up with a van that we could drive for at least 5 years and not have a car payment (thank you NATI stock for a good quarter).

Here's a couple of pictures!




Alex loves that the doors open automatically. He says "opit ... dough!" (open it, door) every time and gets really excited about it. Once I figure out the buttons, I'm sure he'll love opening the door himself. How handy.
He also likes being able to climb in on his own, checking out the seat next to him (random), watching big trucks drive by on his level, and the DVD player of course . He also thinks it's great fun to climb in back and sit, but even more fun that it's really easy to run up in the front and "drive" once he climbs in. (He finally learned that he can't do that and has to sit in his seat after MANY tantrums that day. The kid loves driving.)

Jon and I like the tint on the windows (the car wasn't deathly hot after church!), the cargo space (stow and go seats are great! And there are tons of compartments everywhere. I even have one for my sunglasses.), the color, and the cushier seats (although I'm not crazy about the pattern of the upholstery. eh.). Oh and getting Alex in and buckled is really easy. We're also big fans of the automatic doors and I also really like the DVD player for Alex. Jon mentioned getting rid of the binky today and I told him I don't know if I can handle car rides and trips to the store without it. Maybe I can with the DVD player working for me now.

We're really excited to make the long drive to Utah for Christmas now. That was actually a big deciding factor in getting the van. It should make the trip a happier one. Especially if Kenn and Amy come along and Caleb and Alex entertain each other. Those boys love riding around together.

So there you have it folks. I am officially one of those people who drive a van and have only 1 kid. I don't even have the exuse of "but I'm pregnant" since we aren't and will thus have only 1 kid for quite some time. We're just hoping we didn't curse ourselves for twins the next time around.