RIP Camry, or how I stopped worrying about the Toyota and learned to love the Escort

Abridged Version:

Camry Died

Got new Old Car.

Camry 1989-2008
"You were almost a Classic"

(2003 - 2008 for us)

OK dedicated blog readers, this one's for you.

I've had this gut feeling for quite some time now that the beloved Camry was about ready to give up the ghost. It's been a great little car, but like the last week of high school, I just couldn't bring myself to put much effort into it. It really started at the beginning of last summer when the AC died. This made for a pretty miserable drive whenever I had Weston in the car. It just got so hot so fast that I was always stressing about him, even with the windows down. This was back when Shannon was working, so I was picking him up every day at 5:30 from day care. Hopefully the child doesn't have any permanent damage from those car rides (Although, I must admit I enjoyed our rides home together... and on more than one occasion we may have made pit stops at Murray park or McDonalds). Anyway.... Despite the insanely cold and snowy winter, the lack of AC in my car remained in the back of my mind. Also, about twice a month, it just wouldn't start. I would just have to wait a few minutes and it would turn over, but it was an annoyance for sure. Since I couldn't ever re-create it, and it never left me stranded for more than 5 minutes, I never bothered to take this in. Over the past 6 months it had started running louder and louder. The breaks started squeaking again, I replaced both headlights within 3 months of each other and put seemingly endless amounts of oil into the belly of that steel beast.

One morning a few months ago I got in the car to go to my early morning church meetings and noticed a small crack had randomly appeared. I knew I had to get it repaired, or it would spread. Unfortunately, the next morning I got back in the car to go to work, only to find that the crack had more than doubled and was beyond fixable. So I was going to need a new windshield...great. Shortly thereafter, we actually had a nice day and I decided to drive with the windows and sunroof open. It was fabulous – until I went to shut said sunroof. The normal "seal of silence" that I would experience when closing the window while the car was still in motion failed to happen. The sunroof no longer properly sealed. This made it even louder in the car. Luckily, it seemed to still ward off rainfall, but I never drove it during a downpour, so I don't know how well it would hold up then. The final straw was the week after Davin's blessing. I could hear the tapping inside the engine...it was a death rattle.. I knew from previous experience that anything that far into the engine would be several hundred dollars to replace. So... I just let it go. Now this obviously wasn't the smartest thing to do... where I more pro-active about things like this, I would have stopped driving it immediately and tried to sell it in running shape... I would have been honest with any buyers... really it would have only raised the value of the car a few hundred (if that)...the damage had been done... the fuse lit... it was just a time bomb at this point...

So I started looking on Craigslist, KSL Classifieds, and Autotrader to see what was out there. In the spectrum of cars around $1500 there is quite a bit crap. I found a 94 ford escort for sale from a mechanic who just buys cars in that price range, fixes them up and re-sells them. I gave it a test drive and thought it ran as good as any $1500 car I had ever driven. The AC works great, the interior is clean, and it has power everything.

This was Thursday right after work - the same day Joy got into town. So I started thinking about it as I was home that evening. As soon as the kids were in bed, I decided that Shannon should test drive it. We stopped off at the bank to get a deposit to give the guy if Shannon gave her approval. On this second, longer test drive, I decided that this was about as good of a deal as I was going to get. We gave the guy our deposit and told him we could get the rest of the money to him by Monday (it was in our online savings account, which takes a few days to transfer back). He was a bit leery of this, but since we had the deposit, said he was ok with it.

When we got home I posted the Camry on all of the aforementioned websites (accept autotrader, which costs money) and set in motion the funds transfer.

The next day, I went to meet Shannon and Joy for lunch when the Camry died it's loud painful death on I-215. There was smoke and pieces of metal clattering around and the type of sounds that make mechanics cry. We have roadside assistance, so it only cost $15 to get it back home, but it did ruin our Café Rio plans.

So when we got home I updated my postings to now say that the Camry was dead. This qualified me to put it in the "Car Parts" section of the KSL classifieds. It sold that weekend, and was gone by Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, our money didn't come in until Tuesday. Luckily the guy didn't sell it out from under us (since he legally could have).

During this time between deciding to purchase the car and actually getting it, I went through what can only be described as male-nesting. I cleaned the garage, organized my tools, and installed the new remote kit for the garage door.

We got the car Tuesday evening. I had to get new rear brakes on it to pass safety and emissions, but it was under $200 for the whole deal, so that's not too bad.

The plan is to keep this thing running for at least 2.5 years until the Altima is paid off...

By then we will probably be wanting a larger car I am sure. So we'll see what happens.

Catching Up

Sorry about the blogging break . . .
I'm back now. I would love to say that I haven't posted because I've been insanely busy doing interesting and productive things, but that would not be entirely true. I have had a fairly full week, but nothing major or pressing. The first part of the week was really relaxed and we just cleaned the house, went to the park, visited Daddy at work and finally picked up the new car. Then I took the boys with me to the DMV to get the temporary permit for the car. Friday was Davin's 2 month check up. He is doing great, but isn't as big as we thought he was. He's actually a little on the small side. Apparently that's just how our kids are. Anyway, to those of you who are interested in the details . . .Davin's Stats are as follows:
height: 23.25 inches--55%ile
weight: 10lbs. 9oz.--25%ile
head: don't recall actual centimeters, but 25%ile
So, ya, he's not the huge baby we imagined him to be. I forgot to mention that we did actually sell the Camry last Sunday!!! This is such great news because with it not running we were concerned no one would buy it. We certainly didn't sell it for what we would have if it was running, but we got a little bit from it, and every little bit helps! :)

When we went to Murray Park on Tuesday all the firefighters were there practicing rescues in the river, so there were about 4 fire engines. Weston was in heaven!

Weston had his first experience on a tire swing at the park this week. He is a big fan.

Davin is 2 months old today!!! He is such a cutie with all his big grins and little chuckles. We love him to pieces.Ok, this is a funny story. Weston LOVES to talk on the phone and is always wanting to call people on my cell. This is him talking to Grandma B (I think) last Sunday. He got hot and took off his pants and then was sitting there chatting on the phone bouncing his foot. I am looking forward to comparing this pic with one of him when he is 16 or 17 (I mean, check out the look he's giving us too!).

Sisters

Oh how I love my sisters. I hate that I live far away from them all, but I love when we get to be together and visit. My older sister, Joy, came to visit me for the first time in almost 2 years (I have seen here in there, but always at my parents house when we are all together). So this was the first time she had seen my house and also the first time she saw Davin! We had a fabulous time together.
Joy got here Thursday evening and we got Papa Murphy's pizza when we got home from the airport. It was so delicious. Ian and I had to run and test drive a little car we were thinking about buying (and did buy, post on that forthcoming), so I felt bad leaving right after she got there, but we weren't gone too long. Anyway, long story short when I got home we spent the rest of the night talking, literally. We didn't go to bed until 3am. Just a few short hours later it was Friday morning and Weston was up and wanting to play. We were so tired, but it was totally worth it.
Friday we went and did some shopping at Deseret Book and Babies R Us. Joy got a new cute diaper bag. We were going to go to Cafe Rio for lunch, but while waiting for Ian to join us got a call that he needed to be picked up because the Camry had died on the freeway on his way there. Bummer. We ended up letting McDonald's feed us instead and Ian worked from home the rest of the afternoon while the rest of us napped. Aren't we the exciting ones?!? Anyway, after dinner that night Joy and I went to this store called "The Quilted Bear." I had never been there. It was tons of fun and had all these little booths set up where crafters sell their stuff. We wandered and looked and got a couple fun things.
Saturday we did a little more shopping. Well I did some more shopping. Joy wasn't feeling great but was a real trooper helping me pick out clothes anyway. I finished shopping for my spring/summer clothes and Joy got a couple dresses for her girls. That night we had a bbq and played with Weston. After the boys were in bed Joy and I went and saw "Penelope" at the dollar theater. It was so cute! We had a great time watching the movie and commenting to each other. It was seriously an adorable movie. We highly recommend it if you like sweet girly movies that make you smile.
So, Saturday was a pretty late night too. I had to take Joy to the airport at 7am Sunday. Sad day . . . our visit was over. It was so fun though. I so appreciate Joy taking her solo vacation out here to visit me! Here are some pics of our awesome sister weekend.

Joy playing with Weston. He was so excited for her to be there and wanted to show her all his stuff.
Weston showing Auntie Joy his new bubble gun out in the backyard (I did not realize that I was in this picture)
Auntie Joy and her newest nephew.
Auntie Joy and the boys. They love their aunties!
Me and my sister . . . I thought we were doing cheesy smiles. ;)

Happy Happy Gurgling

Davin has been making the cutest little gurgly sounds, almost like laughing, and smiling a lot more now. I can't help but post the cutest ones. Our visit with Auntie Joy is going wonderfully. Look forward to a post about it on Monday!

It's All About Me!

Oh wait . . . my blog posts are mostly about my family, my kids, my failures, joys and the minutia of my life. I also don't post a lot of pics of myself, however, I was playing with photobooth for the first time ever (even though we have had a mac our entire married life) and took some pics of myself. It was pretty fun and addicting. I really wanted to get a good shot of my hair since I'm totally loving this haircut and today is the first day of my contacts being back in! Yay! So here I am in my element with Davin sleeping in his carseat behind me. :) Enjoy.

Baby Smiles

Davin has been smiling for real for a couple weeks now but I hadn't been able to get a picture of his cute little happy face before. Today during Weston's naptime we had some play time and I finally captured some of his adorable baby smiles for your viewing pleasure!

Nightmares

Last night Davin had an awesome sleeping night and was only up once from 10pm-7:15am! I know, you're thinking, "Shannon probably is feeling so rested only having to get up once," but sadly you would be wrong. Weston woke up screaming twice last night because he was having bad dreams about a spider being in his bed. So after going to bed at 10:30 last night I was up at 11:30 debriefing with Ian why Weston was having nightmares, then up again at 2am calming Weston down and tucking him in, then at 4:30 with Davin for a feeding, then Davin again at 7:15. Ugh. Poor Weston was convinced there was a spider in his bed. Probably because he found a little tiny spider in the kitchen yesterday and also he looked at the big huge tarantula at the library (it was in a cage). Anyway, Ian pulled the covers all they way back just to make sure it really was just a dream (spiders in your bed is not out of the realm of possibility in our house). So yeah, not the best night for me, but I'm coping.

Today we were going to go to the toy store to pick out a present for Weston's cousin Lizzie's birthday. Weston had some leftover birthday money in his piggy bank so I told him he could bring it and pick out a toy for himself too. He was pretty excited about this and put his money in his pocket at like 9am. We ended up going to Target instead of Toys R Us, but it was so fun. Weston picked out a really cool little curious george train toy that goes all on it's own and then turns around and goes the other way when it runs into something. I got a fun toy too. I have been wanting a dust buster for about a year now and I had a Target gift card, so I finally bought one! Now that I've had it for a few hours I'm already wondering how I lived without it all this time. I love indulging my OCD tendencies. :) I won't say what we ended up getting for Lizzie, but it's awesome. Also, side note, if you are ever looking for paint with water books for your kids, Target has them. We got a few of those too. Definitely a fun little outing.

My new toy! Isn't it great? It even matches my kitchen with the red and white. Loving it!
Weston and his new George toy. He was pretty pleased with himself when he paid for it too.