February 13, 2011

Amelia's New Ride

Big weekend for the Kalahurkas.  For the past four years, we've been a one-car family.  In some ways, I've enjoyed this.  It's resulted in our being a family that (by necessity) does a lot of things together.  For example, on many mornings, Bill and I drop Amelia off at day-care together.  I think it's kind of nice that we both get to wish her a good start to her day.  We also typically do all of our grocery and other weekly shopping together.  These are the nice parts about having only one car.  I hope that we will still do some of these things.

In the past couple of months, however, being a one-car family has become a little more difficult.  Capital Metro changed the train schedule so that there is not a train running at a good time for me to come home from work.  Also, it's been VERY cold (for Texas) during the past couple of weeks, making for some mighty chilly walks to the train station in the morning.  Bill has been having to pick me up every day and drop me off on a lot of mornings.  It's far from an impossible situation, but also not ideal.  With Billy's arrival impending, we finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a second set of wheels.

Our goals for a new vehicle were pretty simple -- big enough to comfortably carry our growing family (and all of its gear) and also something that is environmentally responsible.  After tossing ideas back and forth for a week or two, Bill and I settled on a pre-owned (2008) Ford Escape Hybrid.  It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it satisfies our needs, isn't a gas-guzzler and didn't break the bank.  Photo is below.  We bought it on Saturday.  I installed Amelia's new car seat on Saturday afternoon, and we then took it for our first family outing to the park. 

Other than the "new" car purchase, life has been pretty uneventful.  Billy's appointment last week went well.  No measurements, but we'll have another ultrasound in two weeks to make sure that his growth remains on track.   I'm definitely starting to feel more and more pregnant as Baby Billy gets bigger and bigger.  Pregnancy seems much more of a challenge this time around (I'm guessing because we now have Miss Amelia to constantly chase).  I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day yesterday -- fell asleep in the chair rocking her at 7:30 and then stumbled across the hall to our bed after putting her down.  I felt much better today after such a long sleep.

Speaking of bed -- I'm headed that direction now.  It's been another long day today, capped off by my somehow managing to get a blue pen mixed in with a load of laundry that included mainly Bill's good clothes.  I told him that a woman would totally see this as an opportunity to go shopping! Unfortunately, that didn't seem to make him feel a lot better.  Probably no Valentine for me this year :(

But let's end this week's report on a good note.  Below are our photos from yesterday at the park.  Enjoy!!

(Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger version).