The weather is warming up and we're so happy to get outside! We went to a several parks this week and checked out the zoo and they were all fabulous.
Ardmore Park
Woodland Park Zoo
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Parks and zoo
Woodland Park Zoo
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
A pictures post
Spencer wanted to do a science fair project. We started working on it this weekend.
Monday, March 4, 2019
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!
Homemade bagels!
And of course, our new baby. lol. Cost way more than any of our real babies, ha!
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.
Adventures by the fire.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Ode to the van
I posted on facebook this week that my van was on its last legs. It has a host of things wrong with it that require a minimum of $2500 of work done to even register the thing in Washington. I'm not inclined to do that on a van that is 13 years old. But I also wasn't planning on adding a car payment to our budget at the moment as we're still so new here and haven't gotten but one normal paycheck yet. It's hard to know how our budget even looks until a few months have gone by.
So we're improvising. We still have the Jeep, but it only seats five. We don't have many times we need to drive all six of us, but when we do we'll drive the van. When not we'll drive the Jeep and I'm sure I'll get lots of interesting looks when I have all four kids and they come tumbling out of it. I'm not a huge fan of putting a kid in the front, but I have to if I take everyone because all the seatbelts in the back are full. We'll limp along for a few months until we have a better feel for the budget and then hopefully get a new van. Well, new to us.
I have to say, I didn't anticipate this problem happening right now, though I'm not shocked, but I'm just really grateful that this van, that we've owned for five years, has trekked through all that time safely. We made it through the 3,100 drive to Washington two months ago with not one single problem with it. I'm honestly glad I didn't have time to have it checked out before we left because I'm sure some of these problems were there before and we would have been super worried the whole drive. But it got us here safely and we definitely got our money's worth out of our $7000 purchase. Five years isn't bad! Now if I can convince someone to take it off my hands when I do buy a new one.
We had a lovely week. My mother-in-law was in town and she spoiled us, like she is so good at doing. We went to parks and ate tasty food and played with our cousins and generally had a lovely time.
We got some new toys this week for our kids. Replaced our trampoline, bought a basketball hoop. Hopefully those get them outside more as time goes by.
And in great news for me, we finally bought a treadmill! I've wanted one for no joke, my entire marriage, but never had room for it. But we saved all our Christmas money and Costco rebate and such and it arrived two days ago. I love it, Bill loves it, and my kids love it. They think running on it is a treat and I had to wake up my three older kids at 8:20 this morning from a dead sleep to get ready for school. They've never in their lives slept that late. They got good workouts yesterday!
So really, it's been pretty much the best week in a very long time despite our van woes. I'll take it!
So we're improvising. We still have the Jeep, but it only seats five. We don't have many times we need to drive all six of us, but when we do we'll drive the van. When not we'll drive the Jeep and I'm sure I'll get lots of interesting looks when I have all four kids and they come tumbling out of it. I'm not a huge fan of putting a kid in the front, but I have to if I take everyone because all the seatbelts in the back are full. We'll limp along for a few months until we have a better feel for the budget and then hopefully get a new van. Well, new to us.
I have to say, I didn't anticipate this problem happening right now, though I'm not shocked, but I'm just really grateful that this van, that we've owned for five years, has trekked through all that time safely. We made it through the 3,100 drive to Washington two months ago with not one single problem with it. I'm honestly glad I didn't have time to have it checked out before we left because I'm sure some of these problems were there before and we would have been super worried the whole drive. But it got us here safely and we definitely got our money's worth out of our $7000 purchase. Five years isn't bad! Now if I can convince someone to take it off my hands when I do buy a new one.
We had a lovely week. My mother-in-law was in town and she spoiled us, like she is so good at doing. We went to parks and ate tasty food and played with our cousins and generally had a lovely time.
We got some new toys this week for our kids. Replaced our trampoline, bought a basketball hoop. Hopefully those get them outside more as time goes by.
And in great news for me, we finally bought a treadmill! I've wanted one for no joke, my entire marriage, but never had room for it. But we saved all our Christmas money and Costco rebate and such and it arrived two days ago. I love it, Bill loves it, and my kids love it. They think running on it is a treat and I had to wake up my three older kids at 8:20 this morning from a dead sleep to get ready for school. They've never in their lives slept that late. They got good workouts yesterday!
So really, it's been pretty much the best week in a very long time despite our van woes. I'll take it!
Monday, February 18, 2019
Grandma is in town
We've been anticipating this visit from Grandma Suzanne since we moved to Washington and it has not disappointed. Bill and I got away for a quick morning date up to Rattlesnake Ledge to go snowshoing Saturday morning. It was delightful. We're not in nearly good enough shape, but we'll be back to try it again sometime for sure. I'm already shopping for kids snowshoes and gear, ha! We did have to turn back a bit earlier than expected because Bill's strap snapped on one shoe. Figures since they were in our attic for six years in South Carolina and we haven't used them for nine years. Whoops! But replacements are cheap, so all is well.
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