Out with the old, In with the new

Friday was finally the day we got to pick up our new car. We decided to trade in our '96 Civic in the deal. Jamie wanted to get  a few pictures of me with the car one last time since my parents gave it to me brand-new when I turned 16.

I had a doctor's appointment that morning so I decided to drive the Civic one last time. I felt pretty sad about trading it in but after driving to G'ville without any A/C all feelings of remorse were removed. So farewell Civic, you served us well!

So we made our trade and headed home. Here's Mathias and Analy after their first ride in the minivan.

I guess this is a good sign! Anything that will knock these two out is wonderful to me.
Here's Mathias, awake, at the beginning of one of our rides we had to take this weekend.

Our driver...

 Miss Analy...

Our new minivan...

Welcome to our family. We pray you will serve us well for the next 10 to 15 years!

Our new ride

Since our family is expanding to three, three and under in a few weeks, we finally had to go out and take another great big step in the adult world. We had to purchase our first car. Yes we have been married almost 10 years but we have been blessed with parents that allowed me to keep my 1996 Honda Civic that I got when I turned 16. (Yes it was new so you can all do the math now!). They also felt sorry for us and gave us their 2000 Accord when my mom purchased her new car. So we have happily driven our cars and packed on the miles (160,000 for the Civic and almost 250,000 for the Accord). We'd happily keep driving them if 3 car seats would fit in the Accord. (Jamie not so happily since the A/C in the Civic quit working this summer.) Unfortunately it ain't gonna happen, so we had to venture into minivan world. We did look at all sorts of cross-overs and SUVs but none of them offer space for kids and anything else. We've spent the past few weeks researching and looking around and finally settled on the Toyota Sienna.
Here's the dealership's photo of our new minivan. (No that's not me driving!)

They told us they used some "advertising" money to bring our price down a few thousand dollars to what we wanted to pay. So here's my advertisement: We felt like we were treated right (so far) and are happy with our buying experience at Gatorland Toyota (so far). I don't think I'll be keeping the blue and orange license plate holder thing on our van. Certainly way to "Gator" looking for our family!
We don't actually have the van in our possession yet. We are waiting on some accessories to be installed. But I'll post some photos we we get it! Mathias and Analy went shopping with us on Saturday. (Just stop and imagine how fun that was!) Mathias' comment was there are too many seats in the minivan. We'll see how he likes it when he's riding around in it. It'll definitely be a change for us all!

Fun in GA - Part 2

After my kids finally got over their fevers, we were able to hang out with family and do some fun stuff. One of our first outings was to watch Cars 2. Here's our crew sporting their 3D glasses.

Mathias wore his about 5 minutes during the actual movie. Just a quick review of the movie, it wasn't as kid friendly as the first one. Not that it had bad or ugly stuff in it but the plot was "James Bond" like and a lot more complicated than the first. It didn't really hold Mathias' attention. We had to visit the bathroom several times and he asked to go home a few times too. He did wear his glasses all the way home!

Our next adventure was a day at the lake. My kids had a blast. They've been begging to go to the beach all summer so this was the next best thing in their book. They got water, sand, and shells. They swam and built sandcastles.

Analy enjoyed laying out.

And almost napping with mom.

It was a perfect little area for our crew.

They enjoyed creating body art with the red clay (don't get that in FL!).

and creating wild hair styles!

There's more photos and info about our trip to come soon...

Bilateral Preauricular Lymphadenitis

GA trip- Part 1

Finally, I'm making myself sit down and blog about our trip to GA a couple of weeks ago. Jamie had a 2 week business trip to Australia, so the kids and I stayed in GA to hang out with our family. Overall, it was a good trip. It felt like the never-ending weekend but the kids and I had a good time. We had lots of time to spend with all our family, time to shop, and time to relax a bit in the pool. (If you consider swimming with a 1 and 3 yr old relaxing!)
We had a nice drive up to GA early Saturday morning. Jamie had to have a DQ Blizzard so we made a stop at the I-75 exit with the big cow. The DQ didn't open until 10am and we were a few minutes early so the kids got to hang out with the giant cow. Everyone was very excited! Analy moo-ed the rest of the drive.

We visited with Jamie's family Saturday. By Saturday evening Analy started running a fever. No big deal, she was feeling fine by Sunday afternoon. Mathias got to go to vacation bible school at Long Creek Baptist Church, Jamie's home church. He really enjoyed it especially since it was an "Egypt" theme and Mathias is obsessed with King Tut these days. We spent Monday hanging out at Nana and Pop's and swimming.
By Monday night, Mathias started running a fever. I gave him some Advil and put him back to bed. About 10 minutes later he got back up and had huge goose-eggs on both of his temples. I'd never seen anything like it before so we called my nurse aunt and mother-in-law. Neither had ever seen or heard of anything like it so off to the emergency room we went. The nearest hospital you'd actually take a loved one is over an hour away from my parents. We made it there just before midnight, just making it into the pediatric unit. They saw us immediately, checked for strep, and decided it was just a viral fever. The doctor said that the knots were swollen lymph nodes. He had never actually seen a patient with swelling like that so he was excited about it and wanted to take photos and record a video. The video is pitiful. Remember it is 1am and Mathias had been sleeping in the car before we got there. They had also been jabbing him down the throat for the strep test. They had to bribe him with a Popsicle. Here's the link to what he posted:
http://youtu.be/UbeREdDTZFY
Mathias is a YouTube star! So nothing major, just your typical viral fever that all you can do is give Advil and Tylenol. We made it back home around 2:30am and Analy woke up her typical chipper self at 6am. Mathias' fever hung around a couple of days.
So to wrap it all up, the first 4 or 5 days of our trip was spent taking care of sick babies. Thankfully, things did get better and we caught up on our sleep!