July

This has been a pretty crazy month... we've been out of town every weekend and have spent more hours in the car than I can count (but I'm gonna try!).

The first weekend of July was spent at my Great-Uncle Merv's cabin in Butte Meadows (14 hours in the car with kids total). It was a quasi-family reunion and it was the kids' first camping experience. They *loved* it. I loved it too, I have a lot of wonderful memories of family gatherings at that cabin. The kids played in the freezing-cold creek, roasted marshmellows, slept in a tent, and got really, really dirty.

I posted a ton of pics on Facebook, but here are a few more.


Poe and Cousin Terra


Bubby & Grandpa playing dinosaurs


The kids with cousin Tyson and cousin Christy (whose expecting a new cousin on P's birthday!) walking to the creek


Bubby and Granny in the FREEZING COLD creek




Squishy was not so enamored of the cold as Bubs...


Which is why she asked cousin Terra to cart her around the creek

After the cabin, we stayed home for a week and then took off to Sac to drop the kids off at my parents house for a week (3 more car hours, new total is 17). Bryan and I headed to San Francisco to see a Giants game with B's cousins (don't have pics of that).

And then we were kid free for a week! A whole week!

Unsurprisingly, I got less done than I wanted, but more that I would have if the kids had been home. They had a fun time hanging out with Granny & Grandpa - including a trip to the State Fair, the zoo, and G&G's special water park in their backyard.

We picked them up on Friday and drove out to Reno (2.5 car hours with kids, new total is 19.5) and spent a short weekend with Bryan's family. We went to the Discovery Museum, went shopping, and the kids practiced "fishing" in the backyard with their new fishing poles. Sissy's getting pretty good at casting. I have a few pics on the iPad, but am too lazy to plug it in an upload them.

The way back added 6.5 kid car hours - total thus far is 26 hours.

Next weekend is a day-trip to Livermore (1.5 hours each way) and then we're home-bound for a few weeks until we leave at the end of August to travel to Colorado for a wedding.

Exhausted would describe us all... in fact, Bryan fell asleep putting the kids to bed tonight. I think I'll go join him. Goodnight blog-o-verse!

She's flipped!

Today, right before my nap (yes, I got a nap today, score one for me), I remembered some of the things I wanted to blog about.

I still probably won't remember all of them since the list came to me seconds before falling asleep. But the first thing I remembered upon awakening (well, the first thing related to the blog... I don't want you all to think I wake up thinking about blogging first. The first thing is usually "ok, which child is awake" and "will they both stay asleep long enough for me to pee") was related to carseats.

We finally flipped Penelope. At 25 1/2 months she is now forward facing.

There will be three different responses to this news:

1. What? You still had her rear-facing? That's awfully long/weird/strange/paranoid. Poor Poe, she was probably so uncomfortable. (She wasn't).

2. What? You flipped her already? Don't you know it's a million times safer to RF until the age of 27? How irresponsible!

3. Um, WTF are you talking about?

Obviously I'm exaggerating a little, but most people will be either shocked that I waited so long or they'll think that I probably should have held out for another year. Or they won't know what the hell I'm talking about.

We flipped her for one major reason... we were without a car seat for G (it was in my parent's truck across town) and we had P's forward facing only monstrosity (it's huge), so we put G in Poe's "old" RF seat and Pen got to flip around and sit in her "big girl" seat.

We were planning on making the transition soon anyway, events just happened to force that transition on Saturday.

I have read the research/seen the videos, and I know that rear facing is safer - for everyone. It's safer for adults as well. But RF was becoming rather impractical. I kept smacking Poe's head on the car trying to get her in the damn seat (she is an Amazon child and crazy-tall). She can now climb into the car herself although she can't quite put herself in the seat. This is still immensely helpful.

Her seat is still a 5 point harness and she will stay in it until she outgrows the limits. Then she'll move to a booster until she outgrows the limits, etc.

Griffin will be RF until at least 2 and we'll reevaluate then. We may keep him RF longer depending on our carseat situation, but I'm not willing to compromise on RF until 2. If he was a year old he'd technically be able to flip (the law is 20lbs AND one year) but there's NO WAY I would flip him at a year. Absolutely no way. As it is I have some reservations about flipping Penelope; but what's done is done and I think flipping her back would trigger more meltdown and tantrums than I am willing to handle.

So there you have it.

Penelope is finally facing forward.

Upswing

So today we traded in my broken Prius and leased a 2010 RAV4. It's much roomier, has that new car smell, is under warranty, and RUNS. So yea!

It was our best option. At least, we're pretty sure it was our best option. Buying a used vehicle wouldn't have cost us any less in the long run and provided we both remain employed (which we're both planning on) then it should all work out.

Hopefully this means things are on an upswing for us and we won't have anymore ridiculously expensive issues related to our cars, home, health, or anything else. I don't know if I can take anymore stress (well, I'm sure I *could* but I can guarantee that no one would want to spend any time around me).

So, to kick off this upswing I thought I'd list a few things that have gone well, as planned, or even better than expected in the past month or so.

1. The pregnancy is progressing well and both baby & I are healthy
2. Penelope is healthy, eats well, sleeps well, and is generally a super happy toddler
3. Other than a few days of a stomach bug, Bryan is healthy - three cheers for a healthy family!
4. I have a 4.0 in Grad School
5. The side door no longer leaks when it rains

The list is small, but it will grow! It could also be that I'm drawing a total blank right now... the most important items are 1-3.

We also have wonderful family and friends who have really helped lift our spirits the last couple of days. We'd like to mention my parents here and give them a public "THANK YOU!" for letting us borrow their truck to get to work, tow the Prius, and for watching Penelope when we needed it so we could get things taken care of. It would have been an even more miserable 4 days without them and their help! So thank you thank you thank you mom & dad! (And Nic who picked us up at 1am and helped Bryan tow the Prius). THANKS so much!!!

Alright, we need to get some sleep - tomorrow is going to be another busy day!

You have to laugh or else you'll cry

So a lot of people know the story, but for the record here is the brief version of the weekend's (continuing) ordeal.

Saturday afternoon we dropped Penny off at my parents and drove out to Concord for Liz's 30th birthday. It was fun while we were there, but I started feeling sick and so we left early and headed back home. Between Vacaville and Dixon on HWY80 the car broke down. It was 12:30am, cold, a little rainy, and we were over a mile from the next exit. We call my brother who looks up a local tow company and we're towed to the next exit where we park our car in front of a repair shop. Nic comes out from Sac to pick us up and drive us home (the cost to tow the car home would have been over $200, as it was it cost us $85 to tow it 2 miles).

Sunday nothing happens because nothing is open.

Monday my Dad takes me out to Dixon to drop off the key so the repair shop can attempt to read the code and tell us what's wrong with the car.

At this point we're hoping that it has something to do with the fuel filter or injector or something related to when we ran out of gas 2 weeks ago since that would be a pretty easy fix.

Nope. The hybrid battery needs to be replaced. The repair owner read the code, called his buddy who works at a Toyota dealership in LA and his buddy said it sounds like the hybrid battery is out which could run us anywhere between $2,500 - $4,500 to fix.

Ouch.

I don't know why the range is so high, but that's what we were told.

So today Bryan & my brother are using my parent's truck to tow the car back to Sacramento where we'll take it to a dealership and see what we can do. Best case scenario, they take the car give us enough credit to cover what we still owe (which is about $2,500) and then we can get a new car (well, new to us). Maybe even something a little bigger since New Baby will be here in a few months...

Worst case scenario: we have to fix the car and magic the money from somewhere... somehow.

To top it all off, I borrowed my parents truck to go to work and briefly got stuck in the mud coming home from work. I had to laugh, otherwise I probably would have sat there and sobbed.

It's been a stressful and pretty crappy couple of days. So if you have some good thoughts to spare please send them our way and hope with us that we end up with the best case scenario today at the dealership.