New things

It's a good thing I did an ode to the van last week, because this week it is gone after five years of good life for us. That was fast! I took an innocent little late night drive to Safeway earlier this week only to get stuck in the parking lot at 11:30PM. I had to call a friend, who bless her, came and saved me and even gave me a recommendation to a car guy who is fabulous and right nearby, so I didn't have to get the Jeep towed there. Anyway, with the Jeep in the shop and the van in rather terrible condition, it turned out we had to buy now not later. With some vital help from family we were able to get into a new van on Friday. It's a 2012 Toyota Sienna with 96K miles on it, which if you know anything about minivans, that's just getting started. I'm super pleased with how it turned out. We got the Jeep back yesterday too and it is running now, though unfortunately it needs new brakes on all four tires, so it's probably not going to far until we get the time to fix that. We'll do the front brakes ourselves and maybe this is the time to learn how to do back brakes instead of paying $400 to get them repaired. Or not. We'll see.

So it's been quite the adventurous week. My kids think the new van is like a really big toy for them. Aaron regularly heads out and opens and closes the auto doors and pulls up and down the window shade and tries out all eight seats. It's really funny to watch him. I found him the other day strapped into his seat happily sucking on his fingers, holding his lovey.

I'm already planning roadtrips now that I can actually thoroughly trust one of my vehicles. Woohoo!

Aside from that, our week has been pretty tame. Ha! Aside from that. There was like nothing else. But we did go to the park on Saturday and Spencer fasted for the first time now that he's eight, and Genevieve did too because she wants to do everything he does. We had a fire last night in our fireplace, which was also delightful. Oh, and we ate really excellent curry and naan last night, thanks to Bill's cooking. Now that we're realy settled in here I am trying to get back into cooking and baking because I truly love the results and it's something I essentially gave up over the last couple years due to just the extreme stress I was under for so long. I'm trying to get back to some of those good things and improve our every day quality of life. When I was at the park on Saturday I saw all these parents running aroudn playing with their kids and I thought huh, I'd like to do that more. Life got real serious as we stressed through so many hard things for two solid years and I'm ready to move on from that phase. Here's to a good start this weekend!

Sunday beauties. Genevieve's hair was just twirled around my finger and it stayed curled like that. She has the most beautiful hair.

 Park adventures.

 New haircuts.

 Chloe is very pleased with her new, yellow bike. I scored this beauty from Walmart's website for $20. At that price I figured I couldn't go wrong. I had to assemble it, but otherwise this thing is perfect for her.

 Aaron test drove it while she was napping. He approves too. This was his pre-haircut Hobbit look. Haha!

Adventures by the fire. 

 Homemade bagels!

 And of course, our new baby. lol. Cost way more than any of our real babies, ha!