I'm officially a soccer mom...

...and I'm not even good at soccer!

Luke and I have been looking at minivans for a little bit now, in anticipation of having two carseats to deal with. (Which, by the way, is coming in only 7 weeks, 2 days.) We thought we found a great deal last week, and went all the way to Richland to test drive it, and it just didn't float our boats. Or at least it wasn't "the one." So, last night I was looking through the Buyer's Guide (classifieds, for those of you who aren't familiar), and found what sounded like some good deals in a dealer's ad. I called on them, and we ended up going in "just to look."...And we fell in love...with a 2003 Dodge Caravan SXT. I never thought I would be excited about a minivan, but this one's a beauty! It's silver, with 4 captain's seats and a bench in the back, and it has some extra safety features, which are comforting for us with two little ones. It has a lot of miles on it for a 2003 (73k-ish), but is in very good condition. (And I'm guessing the higher mileage helped us be able to afford it.) So, anyway, the financial stuff is getting figured out today, and we'll pick it up tonight! Crazy!

On a sad note, I have to say goodbye to my first (and very faithful) little car, the Dodge Shadow. I've had that car for almost 7-1/2 years, since my 16th birthday. And it might not be pretty on the outside (or the inside, hehe), but it has more oomph than any other car I've driven. (I guess that's what happens when you put a V6 engine in a shoebox-sized car.) Anyway, I'm going to make Luke take a picture of me with the car before we trade it in tonight, just for sentimental value.

Update: Here are some pictures of the actual van I found on the dealer's website:






-{lkr}

We're in!

Thanks to the multitudes of people who helped us move in to our house. That includes both Rumley and Liabenow families and a bunch of FHBC people. THANK YOU! The move was SO incredibly smooth. From the time people arrived and started packing stuff into trucks, until the time the apartment was completely emptied and cleaned from top to bottom, was about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Isn't that amazing?! It's all because we had probably 30 people there. I just sorta stood there and watched people go by in a big blur.

Then, when we got to the house with all of our junk, it was all inside in about an hour (I think?). And some wonderful folks stayed to help us unpack. Really, I was 2/3 unpacked in our first day here. How cool is that? I was SO incredibly blessed by those people!

We're feeling pretty settled now. We still have a few things to deal with, like finding the right vanity mirrors and hanging them. And our dishwasher will FINALLY be installed today. It came in yesterday, after a solid 10 days of dishpan hands. Really, my poor little hands could use a break from all that washing.

Luke got me this really hip shelf for Christmas that we want to put up in the living room, but that has been a disaster. First, I told him the wrong spot for the holes, so the holes were too far apart and the shelf couldn't hang there. That made a couple of extra holes in our new drywall and paint. Then, we got the holes right, and the drywall anchors wouldn't hold the shelf up. Luke tried to use some sort of glue to hold them in. It worked for about an hour, and then the shelf came tumbling down. (I sang that line just like "And the house came a'tumbling down...") Anyway, THEN we thought we were smart and bought toggle bolts. (Look it up if you don't know what those are. They're kinda cool.) Well, the heads were too big. I finally got the right size heads yesterday, and we tried to hang our shelf, and it's such a disaster. We can't get the screw heads close enough to the wall without them pretty much falling through the hole, and when they're a good closeness to the wall, the shelf won't catch on it. AUGH! And that's the saga of the shelf. I'd like to throw the thing out the window, but then we'd have four unused holes in our wall. Sheesh.

On another topic, Grace is in her big girl bed and loving it! It's a sweet, white twin size bed. We actually bought a bunk bed, and she's using the top bed, because it already has guard rails with it. So it's sorta like a big crib with short walls. Does that make sense? Anyway, she liked playing in it a lot when we first got it, but lately she's been an angel with it. She takes two naps each day, and yesterday for each nap I said, "Want to go take a nap?" and she ran toward her room, stopped to make sure I was coming, and ran the rest of the way to her bed. Then I put her in her bed, and she lay down and took a nap. How sweet is that? It's every mother's dream, I think. I hope it lasts! I told Luke we should've started with this bed in the very beginning, hehe.

Well, is that enough of an update? I will post pictures if I ever have the patience for it on dial-up. Have a good day everyone!


-{lkr}

Goodbye, DSL...Hello, cornfields!

Tonight is our last official night with DSL. Tomorrow we begin our move to the boonies, where the phone lines aren't equipped for DSL and cable service doesn't exist. It's back to dial-up for us! (That isn't an excited "!". It's more of a "yikes!" kind of "!", just to clarify.)

If it wasn't for our beautiful home, it wouldn't be worth it. But boy are we excited to live in that house. Who's gonna come visit us?

Luke's addendum: You can also hear gunshots from our new home and smell fresh cow stuff. We do love it there, though. Pictures to come sometime when I figure out our camera's issues.

An essay entitled "Why we haven't blogged lately..."

My laptop has pretty much been laid to rest, which is part of the reason we haven't blogged in a while. It's not so much losing its functionality as a computer; it's just unable to keep power. The battery doesn't last long, and the power cord is pretty much broken. It'll work if I hold the cord really tight into the power hole, but can you imagine typing a whole blog (wordy as mine are) with your left hand as the muscles in your right hand cramp from holding the cord in? Not fun. So, I'm limited to the desktop, which is pretty much buried under piles of house stuff. In fact, right now I'm sitting cozily close to our new mailbox. How sweet.

Another part is that Luke's laptop hates our camcorder, so we can't get our digital pics off it onto his computer to post here. I don't like blogs with just words. I love to look at blogs with pictures. Therefore, I've been waiting to post until we have some pictures to show. Sorry - not gonna happen today. I'm sure we have pictures from Christmas and the house that we could post, if our technology would cooperate. But no.

And lastly, things have been insanely busy lately. We are now in the final stretch of house-building. Our countdown is pretty much down to one week. ONE WEEK! Do you remember when we started this project? Only four months and one week ago (approximately). And now, we're hoping to move in next week. WHOA! No, our toilet paper holders aren't up, and our countertops aren't quite done, and we don't even have toilets yet, but we WILL move in next weekend! I'm determined! Hopefully electrical will finish this weekend, plumbing on Monday, carpet on Monday, appliances on Monday or Tuesday, HVAC on Tuesday, closet shelving on Wednesday, and final inspections Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. BUSY SCHEDULE! Of course, nothing finishes when the people say it will finish, so we'll see how stressed out I can get next week. It might be in everyone's best interests to just wave and smile from a distance next week...I could be a little tense! Hehe, no, I will try my hardest to take things in stride.

In other news, I think we're going to switch Grace to a twin bed when we move. This way, we can put the crib away for a while before the baby comes. Then when the baby needs it we can get it back out and set it up without Grace feeling like the new guy stole her bed. Anyway, I'm a little nervous about putting my little girl in a big girl bed, but I think she'll do okay. It might take a couple of days of "training" to get her to stay in bed during naps and stuff, but it'll be worth it in the end, I think. Crazy.

It's the weekend! *Everybody cheers*

-{lkr}