Aaaayooo (love you)!

Helping Mommy feed Kylie the other night. Grayson was SOO proud of himself and even said "cheese" as I took this picture! :) He had a huge smile on his face and he also was feeding Kylie a few pieces of her dog food at a time! She is so patient with him! He helped feed her again last night and he ended up spilling half the food all over the floor, but I just laughed because it was so cute! He then would stop and pick up the food and put it back in Kylie's bowl! :)

Yesterday was an amazing day (even with our CR-V's AC not working again)! We were coming home from Corbin's sleep study appointment and Grayson said something for the first time that makes every parent giddy and want to cry all at the same time! All the sudden he said "Mommy, Aaaayooo, Daddy, Aaaayooo." I quickly realized he was saying "LOVE YOU!" I even got it on video! :) Love it!

As for the CR-V the AC has broken a total of 3 times now. We got it fixed twice, once when I was pregnant with Grayson and then it died again a year and a half later, after the warranty was expired. After the second time it went out we didn't want to get it fixed again so poor Jason has been riding around without air conditioning for a few months now. Well Wednesday he told me that the car was sounding really weird and when he showed my brother and I it sounded awful and then it smelled really bad, like burned rubber! So Jason decided we had to take it in. Jason's brother-in-law, Ryan, ended up working his lawyer magic and getting them to fix it at COST (Ryan has taken his car to this place for a long time)! Apparently the AC going out on a 2004 CRV is a quite common problem! I honestly do not like this car at all! It just has to last us a few more years! With a new house we cannot really afford a new car as well. So hopefully by the time we want a third child we will be able to get a new car.

Car trouble and being a grown up!

Note: Jason would be super proud of me as this is a post about the unexpected finances that go along with owning cars. He is the first one to tell you that I DESPISE talking about finances and am a self-proclaimed shopaholic!

On Tuesday when we are getting ready to leave for work and I turned on our CRV it made an odd noise and felt was driving odd. I made Jason follow Corbin and I the five minutes to daycare/work to make sure we got there safely. Jason then drove the car around Corbin's daycare parking lot a few times to see if he could figure out what was wrong. When he came back around he said the noise stopped when he turned the air conditioning off. He then went to work and made an appointment with the Honda dealership for Friday. That meant that Corbin and I had to go to and from work everyday with the windows down. BTW he LOVED this!

Well come to find out yesturday afternoon the whole air conditioning unit died! Basically I think the compressor exploded and sent shards of stuff into belts, etc (yah I have no idea about cars! I am a girly girl!) Our car is a 2004 and has 85,000 miles on it. Jason has been trying to convince me that we just need to pay the RIDICULOUS amount to get it fixed (its half of what the car is even worth) and keep driving it until it dies eventually. We are doing well finanacially but when you have our bedroom furniture to finish paying off, Corbin's bedroom furniture, daycare cost (which will double once Grayson gets here! EEK not looking forward to that!) and all the things that come with everyday life and owning a home etc. it really big strain.

We called all our parents, my sister and her husband, who is works as a regional manager at Progressive, to get their opinions on what we should do. Should we just pay the amount to get it fixed or bite the bullet and get a new car? Several people said to get a second opinion on the car but most said it wasn't really worth putting all that money into a car that has 85,000 miles on it already.

I am of the mindset that I want a reliable car that is going to take get me and my children places safely and with AIR CONDITIONING in this freakin' Texas heat! All I can say is thank goodness this week our weather has decided to cool off a bit and not be in the 100s! Corbin is a total sweat ball and the CRV has no vents in the back so I was already starting to feel bad for the little guy all the time this summer when it was over 100 all the time.

Today we went to the Toyota dealership to test drive cars. I have a Toyota Corolla, (which Jason now drives to work everyday) that I got just before Jason and I got married because my 9 year old jeep decided it had had enough and the transmission died. After talking with my dad this morning he said he had a guy over there who he really liked who would be a reliable person to talk to. (My dad has bought a few Toyota's from him.) So we went over and test drove a Highlander hybrid. We wouldn't get a hybrid simply because its out of our price range, we just drove the only one they had available. Jason and I both loved driving/riding in it, and i think Corbin liked it too! The guy was even nice enough to let us strap in Corbin's car seat so Jason and I could test drive it together!

They are going to get in a car with the specifications we want with no obligation to buy it so we can see if we like it and I guess we will decide what to do then.

As of right now our plan is to possibly just wait a few months and try to save up a decent down payment so the monthly payments are lower and keep driving the CRV b/c it is drivable and hope that it stays cool and doesn't shoot back up to the 100s again anytime soon. We are even considering getting rid of our LAN line phone/cable- (bye bye Time warner!?! we aren't too happy with it anyways and wanted to get AT&T u-verse but it has yet to come out here in Austin.) I have grown to love cable tv but it is a sacrifice we would have to make at this point to save money. I would certainly miss my Food Network and TLC shows. Corbin would miss the Disney channel and Jason-the discovery channel. But we have netflix and can stream a lot of shows through our X-box and there is always hulu.com. Since school has started I really haven't been able to watch a ton of tv anyways and would much rather spend time with my family. I know too that I would have to finally maybe GROW UP, and be an adult and stop being such a shopaholic! It would be better for everyone involved! Jason would stop being stressed about the credit card and it would make us a lot happier!