Where have I been?

I feel like my blog has been lacking in updates lately. And it's not for the lack of subject matter because we have plenty going on around here. I think it's mostly because our laptop died. So I'm forced to use the desktop computer which is far away from a little 16-month-old troublemaker. I can't leave her alone for more than 5 minutes so that severly limits blogging time. My free time has also been consumed lately with preparations for Madeline's big 3rd birthday bash coming up this weekend. I have tons of fun planned for the kids and I can't wait!! You will certainly see posts about this. I've been working too hard not to share all the fun.

Other big happenings around here have been potty training Madeline and getting a new minivan. I think we are on Week 5 or 6 with Madeline and she is doing fantastic! We followed the 3-day potty training guide and it worked wonders for us. It was a long and frustrating 3 days, but she got it by the end of the 3rd day. Going #2 took a bit longer but she is getting the hang of that too. Staying dry at night has been hit-or-miss. She finally woke me up in the middle of the night this last week to tell me she had to go, so that is progress. But on nights when she is dead tired, this hasn't been happening. So we'll see how she continues to progress.

As for the new minivan, this was NOT planned at all. However, with Andy's car being 13 years old, we knew this day was coming. We were just hoping to be able to wait it out another year. But he ended up taking it in last week and it needed $1000 to fix its various issues. We decided this was our breaking point and we were done putting money into his old car. Since one of the problems was a safety issue, something needed to happen ASAP or we would be living with one car for awhile. Neither of us wanted that so off we went shopping for a minivan. Fortunately we had been kinda window shopping earlier in the year so it helped us decided on a minivan rather than an SUV. We knew we couldn't afford new so we went looking for a used Toyota Sienna or Honda Odysessy. As luck would have it, Toyota was turning over its fleet of courtesy vehicles. So we found a "used" 2011 Sienna with only 2000 miles on it for the same price as the 2008's we were looking at. It's their base model, but it still has a lot of extras like power sliding doors, XM radio and a back-up camera. And the space!! How great it would have been to have this on the many road trips back and forth from Columbus with 2 kids, 2 dogs and days worth of luggage. It will serve us well on our road trip this summer to the beach.