Goodbye Truck, Hello Van!

We finally did it, and bought a mini-van! And I absolutely love it!!!

We have been looking at vans online for a while now, just to get a good feel for prices. We really wanted to get a Toyota Sienna with all wheel drive. I noticed that there are not a lot of Sienna's on the market, which I hope is because it's a good van that people hang onto. Trying to find one with AWD is even harder. Our price range also narrows down the field.

We saw a 2011 Sienna pop up in Riverdale towards the end of May. The price was very reasonable and it seemed to be exactly what we were searching for. We decided it was worth driving out to see. Honestly though, we were not planning on buying that day. We were still hoping to save up a little more money.

When we pulled into the car lot, the first thing P1 asked was "Where are the yellow cars?" He really likes Bumblebee, and I guess he was hoping we would buy a yellow car!

Well, we test drove the Sienna and I loved it. It was in great condition and was really everything I had been looking for. PE basically left it up to me. We negotiated with the salesman, and I feel like we got an extremely fair price. We drove the van home, and I will admit that after we paid for everything I felt a little sick to my stomach. But that tends to happen when I have to write out a large check.

The kids loved that van right away! They would get sad/mad if we took the car instead of the van. I absolutely love the automatic doors. And the air conditioning. And really, just about everything!

The only issue that we've had, is that the battery died 5 days after we bought the van. But we think that it was the original car battery because it was a Toyota battery. We happened to be in St. George on vacation and so we went to the Ken Garff down there to have it replaced. Later, we talked to the Ken Garff in Riverdale and they reimbursed us for the battery.

St George Trip

We went down to St. George with my family the last week of May. We rented a condo near the Green Valley Resort. The condo had 2 pools that we had fun swimming in. The condo also had a surrey bike in the garage that we took out for a spin. We also spent a lot of time just relaxing in the air conditioned condo. The kids enjoyed watching Disney Junior. PE had a work meeting that he couldn't miss at the beginning of the week, so he joined up with us late Tuesday night. My colitis was still flaring during the trip, but fortunately it didn't get in the way too much.

I had read online about a nice short hike that ended at at a waterfall and pool. It's called the Red Cliffs Nature Trail. We decided to try it out. When we got there though, we found multiple trail heads and we weren't sure which one was the one we wanted. Turns out it is the Red Reef Trail. We got started later in the day than we wanted to, so it was pretty hot. It is only 1/2 a mile, but I wasn't sure I was going to make it. It was very hot, and I was pregnant and had my colitis issues. But I survived and we made it to the little pool. There was another family there that told us within a week, the pool would probably be gone. I guess early spring and fall are the best times for this hike.

My parents and siblings left Thursday after breakfast. We all ate at The Bear Paw Cafe on Main Street. It was a really nice place for breakfast. I want to go back when I am not on a limited diet! The Bear Paw French Toast looked amazing! When we left, we found out that our battery in our new van was dead. At least it happened while my parents were still with us! We had just bought the van 5 days earlier. We jumped the battery and took it to the Ken Garff store. They spent an hour trying to get a hold of Ken Garff Honda in Riverdale to approve covering the cost of the battery. They never did reach them, so we just had them replace the battery. We kept the receipt and had the one in Riverdale reimburse us later. So we spent about 2 hours of our trip waiting in car shop.

We got a room at the Clarion for the rest of our stay. We took the kids to the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center, and I think that was their favorite thing we did. It was a really fun pool with lots of water slides and toys to play on. We grabbed dinner at Wendy's.

 On our last day, we went to the Thunder Junction park. It is a really neat park complete with a volcano that "erupts" every so often, and a train that goes around the park. Unfortunately, it was super hot so we didn't last too long. But it would be a fun park to visit again during cooler weather.

May Pictures

P1 building Transformers out of Duplos. The green one is Grimlock and the blue one is Strongarm.

P2 is so fashionable! She likes to wear her hair elastics on her arms and feet.

 

Some of P1's artwork:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

A self-portrait

My in-laws took us to the Rockin E Country Store so I could pick out some flowers to plant (which was super sweet of them). P2 decided to get on the horse in the store, and then Grandpa put in a quarter. She handled it really well until Grandpa tried to show her how to make it go faster. P1 wouldn't even give it a try after that.

Just chillin out on the couch:

 Dad pulled out his old laptop for the kids to play with. They really enjoyed it, but didn't like sharing it with each other.

Sleeping Beauties

My kids don't take regular naps anymore. Instead they just fall asleep in random spots when they are tired. P2 is especially good at falling asleep anywhere.

My sleeping beauty:

And occasionally, even P1 falls asleep!

Dog-sitting

Our neighbors asked us to take care of their dogs while they were out of town for the weekend. We would just go over and feed them and let them outside to go potty. The kids loved playing with the dogs. They were both little dogs. Emma is a super hyper little terrier. P1 really enjoyed running around with her. Gabby is a much older and calmer Pomeranian with a purple tail. P2 really liked Gabby. Emma was a little too much for P2. Even though she is a tiny dog, she still managed to knock P2 over within the first minute of going into their house.

P2 heard a dog barking the next week, and she said "Mom! Emma needs you!" And both P1 and P2 dug up all their dog stuffed animals and named them Emma and Gabby.

Parks

Every Friday we have a neighborhood park day. We rotate through different parks in the area. We have a lot of fun parks to go to!

This contraption is at 2 of the parks we go to, and P2 loves it! The kids love to sit on it and have you spin it around. It takes a fair amount of effort to move, so it's a good workout for mom. For some reason, P2's favorite park things include work for mom.

This fire station park is a fun little park! And it has some nice shade which I love!