Cars: Dead, New, and Sold

Life has been full of transition for us! Some planned, some not so planned. I want to start off by saying my reliable little Suzy has passed on and will be joining the Fowler salvage yard soon. I bought her in 2008 when she was only 3 years old. She was the first car I ever financed, the first car that had a warranty, and the most fun one to drive for all 8 years that I had her. She was just under 160,000 miles and running great when out of the blue last Saturday she started making a knocking noise on my way to work. I called Nick and told him about it so he could check it out when I got home. He tinkered around and took it for a test drive with Jacob while I did yard work. Next thing I know, a strange truck pulled up in the driveway and out got Nick with Jacob in his carseat......I said "Where's my car?" Turns out the engine blew while he was driving and he had to abandon it to get home. Thankfully some nice people took pity on him walking down the road with a baby and brought him home. He went back later with his truck and towed it home.

There is no hope of fixing it. My plans were to drive it until we sold our house, then sell it and use that money to put down on a newer car after moving. Yeah.....that didn't happen. It kills me that it happened so quickly and now the car is worthless. We have a lot of memories in this car. We brought both of our babies home in it, countless drives in the country to see family, thousands of trips to and from work. I will truly miss her!

The next crisis was that I needed a car!! There was no way we were going to get by with one car and I would have to start looking immediately. We hit the dealerships Monday and found a great catch at Fowler Honda. I knew I wanted an import that was only a few years old, and I ended up choosing a '13 Honda Civic with low miles and warranty. I haven't decided on a name yet, but she's pretty fancy!

In other car news...we are saying goodbye to the '57 Chevy project car that has been in our garage for the last 2 1/2 years! We had good intentions of fully restoring it and selling it as a finished hot rod, but money and free time got tight so we settled on selling it as is and breaking even with our investment. After being relisted a few times on Ebay we sold it this week to a buyer in Texas who is picking it up soon.

We are very glad to see it move on so that we can focus our efforts on other things around the house. Plus the added garage space will be very nice! Our house is now for sale, but that's a post for another day....

Counting Down to the 1st Birthday!

At 11 months old you:

• Are FINALLY sleeping thru the night--most of the time. I have to tuck you in just a couple of times per week now
• Go to bed around 7:30 and wake up around 7am
• Still take two 2hr naps each day
• Rarely get baby food--you are all about momma's cookin'! If it's soft and mushy, you eat it
• Drink water in a sippy cup with meals, and a bottle before naps/bed
• Are *almost* too long for your 12mo size clothes
• Will occasionally let go and stand on your own for a few seconds
• Have discovered the stairs and can climb them....
• Make a funny scrunched up face to be silly 

 

It's hard to believe that in one month we will be throwing a birthday party for this big guy! He is a joy to have and he loves to play with his big brother. They are learning to share toys (and food) and I'm pretty sure that daddy is his favorite parent.

 

 ^Those blue eyes!!!

 ^My scrunchy face

My Boys

Here I am! It's been almost 3 weeks since I posted last so I'm making up for it in this post with a ton of pictures of what we've been doing!

Jacob is growing like a weed and will be 11 months old next week!!! He is on the move and starting to experiment with standing on his own.

 

Bradley had a fun Valentine's party at his school. I went and helped with setup. It was in the morning and some parents brought eggs, biscuits, pancakes, and juice! The kids all had a great time. He loves his teacher Mrs. Usry!

 

My steam mop broke so daddy took it out on the porch to see if he could fix it (he couldn't--too old and worn) so the boys had to be his audience to make sure he was doing it right.

 

 ^Brad with his Nan and Aunt Sarah

The whole 1st grade at Brad's school had a circus-themed program on March 1st. The three of us sat in the audience and cheered him on! They did a great job, and there was cotton candy, popcorn, cookies, and lemonade for snacks afterward. Brad is on the far left on the floor in a stripe shirt.

 

In other news...we have been working madly around the house to finish projects and prepare to list it for sale in the next couple of weeks. My next post will have pics of some things we have done so far! Stay tuned...