FREEDOM!

We bit the bullet. A big bullet. On Monday we bought a car!!! A 2011 Kia Sorento.

Free at last, Free at last! Until now I've been confined to where my two legs and a stroller can take us on a cold day so I've had my eye on cars for quite some time now and finally felt like this was the one for us. On Saturday I test drove the car and really liked the sales man who reminded me of dwarf version of Cam from Modern Family. We didn't have the time and we just needed an extra day to think, so I told dwarf Cam to throw some dirt on the car and park it in a corner until we made up our mind. After lots of talk I called the him back and told him we'd like to come in again. Darwf Cam told me while we were signing papers that the dealership was ready to ship the car somewhere else THAT DAY so I called right on time.

While I liked the salesman, the finance guy on the other hand was not as awesome. He reminded me of a geometry teacher I had in highschool and his fly was down. He tried to sell us extra insurance. We had said no four or five times before he stopped talking about it, and then of course he had to mention it at least three more times before we left. He'd say, "Either you have it or you don't, you know..." over and over again. He didn't even explain what it really was he was trying to sell. It got to the point where I was exaggerating my eye rolls every time he mentioned the extra insurance. Not only that, we told him that we preapproved for a loan at one bank for an awesome interest rate, and come to find out when we're half way through signing papers, he did not use that bank we picked out. The bank he used gave us an interest rate almost TWICE the amount we were preapproved for, which made a huge difference in the monthly payment. I kept thinking something wasn't right and I'm glad I caught that. Finance guys should be better than that. And check their flies. Besides being annoyed at him, and our paperwork seeming off, that's all I could think about.

We've had our car a couple days now and I am still in love with it. It drives beautifully and for a larger car, can go from 0-60 pretty nicely. Yes, I've tested that a couple times. I love being able to run errands with Zach or just knowing that I have the freedom to go anywhere. I love my Kia!

Home Improvement

We are still slowly getting our empty house filled in and looking like our own. We started with a project that was no so fun, but completely necessary. Our dishwasher started making this funny grinding noise and it just got worse and worse. In fact I stopped it in the middle of the cycle and hand washed everything because I thought it might explode. It was 9:00 at night but we decided right then and there that we were going to solve this problem. Jacob got out his tool box and looked up a you tube video. (We would be completely handicapped with out you tube videos...) The video we found was a lady with her toddler in the background making all sorts of noises I'd expect to hear in a zoo. She seemed kind of ditzy and didn't really build our confidence in taking apart the dishwasher, but I got brave and decided if this lady and her zoo child could do it, so could we. Then Jacob started taking apart the dishwasher like a seasoned handyman and this is all the goop we found...

I could not believe we were washing our dishes in THAT. I mean, there was worm looking scum stuff in there. We also found a screw that didn't look anything like the screws holding the dishwasher together. Probably a contributing factor to the scary noises. We still don't know where it came from but we're pretty sure it doesn't belong in the dishwasher. We scrubbed and scrubbed... and scrubbed some more and had a beautiful clean dishwasher afterwards.

Now our dishes look cleaner and our dishwasher sounds so much quieter. Jacob told me he gets jealous when I run the dishwasher during the day and he's not home to hear how quiet it is now.

We also recently replaced a chandelier with a ceiling fan. We just did not enjoy the old chandelier that came with the house. It belongs in a haunted castle. (It looks semi cute to me in this picture, but trust me, up close and personal, its an ugly mess.)

 Putting up this ceiling fan was probably the worst three hours of my life. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and we even had to use you tube videos again. There were all sorts of wires everywhere that didn't match the colors we had, parts screwed in wrong, horrible directions, dropping important screws in the motor... it was awful. In the summer when the afternoon sun is beating into our family room and we have a nice breeze to keep us cool, the worst three hours of my life will all be worth it.