Farewell 2003 Honda Civic; hello 2014 Honda Accord

We bought our 2003 Honda Civic used in June 2007, a year after getting back from China. We were just dorky enough to take our first car we bought ourselves/together out for a photo shoot with the tripod at the Dorothea Dix field near our Raleigh apartment.

I had been wanting a new car for two or three years now. I was just tired of having a manual transmission, especially whenever I was stuck in traffic. The car had lots of squeeks and rattles (that  neither the mechanic nor Zac could ever hear) and the gear shift would often refuse to go into first gear or reverse, particularly when there was someone waiting for me to get out of the way. But, I kept waiting to buy one because we had two kids in daycare and we were saving money to buy a house and we didn't want to use up money we might need for a downpayment.

So now that we sold our old house and I did some math on our finances, I decided we could afford to get a new car. I also think the Trump debacle has made me more eager to get everything squared away, because I'm convinced the economy will collapse again or there will be some other disaster in the next couple of years.

I'd been shopping for cars online for a while, and I was determined to get a blue car. I also really liked the Honda brand and I loved the way the new Accords looked. I read a couple reviews online, and proceeded to look for a good used Accord in blue. We both left work early one day to test drive the different trim levels and decide what we wanted.  Then I just had to find a blue Honda Accord EX.  They turned out to be quite rare in this particular trim level for some reason. Eventually, I expanded my search to include a 50-mile radius, and as luck would have it, there was one for sale in Burlington, where Zac's dad lives. So we arranged to come over so they could watch the kids while we went to possibly buy a car. It was like the house purchase all over again, with the uncertainty, but it was far less stressful because there are lots of Honda Accords out there, and I could compromise on the color if I had to.

So that afternoon we took a family selfie in front of the civic, a trusted family member for nearly 11 years, then headed off to Burlington. The poor car had no idea we planned to trade it away as it happily buzzed down the highway.

I'll skip most of the details, but basically we used our newly awakened negotiating skills (plus some online advice we'd read) and negotiated pretty well for the new car. We figure we got them as low as possible, given that they actually let us walk out of the dealership. We were quite disappointed we hadn't gotten the car, until they called my cell phone after we were already on the highway and agreed to come down to within winking distance of our price. I don't know how people do business on a regular bases-- it is so stressful.

Anyway, we got the car I wanted and it's beautiful.

(Since I'm actually writing this a month later, I can say that the only problem with the car is that the seat is uncomfortable because the headrest pushes my head forward. We're still investigating ways to make the seat more comfortable. It's weird because this problem wasn't mentioned in the reviews I read, and we even have a friend with the exact same car that we talked to before buying this and she didn't mention anything about the seat problem. Yet once I googled "uncomfortable seat honda accord" tons of complaints came up, so I am not alone. I guess the problem is the seats are designed for safety and not for comfort. So I do have a bit of buyer's remorse.)

Lucky location

Zac and I know that we are lucky, probably far more than our share. But we also make a lot of plans and think about what we want. One of the things we wanted in our new house was close to a park or greenway.  We are lucky because this house's location is next to both a greenway and one of the best parks in Cary. It is so nice to be able to head out on a warm February morning on foot with the kids and have Simon find bugs to heart's content, while Alice zips around on her bike.

Snail Trail

Simon lined up all these little snail shells that he had collected from under a bush in the front yard.

Shake-it cheese

We were having spaghetti for supper. At the beginning of the meal, before the rest of us were in the dining room, Zac handed Simon the container of shake-it cheese (known by the rest of the world as parmesan cheese) and then turned his back to adjust the window blinds. When he turned back around, Simon had poured way too much cheese onto his noodles. He thought he had done a great job though.

President's Day Playdate

Alice had to go to school on President's Day because it was one of the snow make-up days. Simon and I had the day off, and I offered to watch Murphy while his mom went in to work in the morning for a while. Murphy and his brother Glenn went to Alice and Simon's daycare and it turns out they live in our new neighborhood. When I found out from other mutual friends that we were neighbors now, Andrea invited us over for dinner. Her boys are staggered in age with Glenn being a year older than Alice and Murphy being a year older than Simon.

Anyway, the boys got along great. We just played in the basement until it warmed up enough to go outside. They were so content and easy compared to when Alice is around.

"I'm a snail"

I asked Simon why all the shoes had been dumped out of the shoe box, and Simon climbed inside the box to demonstrate that he had been using it because, "It's my shell! I'm a snail."

Kids in the backyard

We continued our unseasonably warm February weekend by enjoying crepes for breakfast on the deck Sunday morning.

The rest of the day, the kids played in the back yard with the neighbors. It was great! Josh from next door thought that it was already warm enough for water balloons, so the kids chased each other around the yard with these mini-balloons, then just played around. It was like a dream come true.  What I've learned from all these "outdoor play areas" that parks have now is that kids really just need some junk laying around in the backyard to have fun. I'm so happy we finally have a suitable yard for playing in.

Warm February Foreshadowing

Although weather warm enough to eat ice cream on the deck in February seems fun, I keep feeling like this is the scene at the beginning of an environmental apocalypse movie where everybody is so happy it's warm in February, then a few years later we're all dying from the extreme weather (which leads to food and water shortages and war and famine) caused by global warming. All the more reason to enjoy the moment, I suppose.

Playdoh everywhere...

Simon loves to make bugs out of playdoh. So every weekend morning, he and Alice come downstairs before we get up and she plays on the iPad while he plays with playdoh. It's a huge mess, but cleans up fairly easily with our lovely linoleum floor.

The problem is that the playdoh crumbs get stuck on socks and tracked all over the house.

But they're having fun and being creative.

"I can get smarber"

"School is important because I can get smarber." 

Really, she meant to write "smarder" which is how it sounds, but she writes a lot of her letters backwards, making this particularly funny. And there's a small person apparently screaming in the background that she added to the picture.

The New Roof

On Wednesday, the roofing company came to put a new roof on our new house. This was necessary because the inspection had revealed that the roof (which was the original one, from 1991) was leaking and needed replaced immediately. This had been a huge point of contention in our negotiations on the house and the reason we finally got the seller to lower the price, which restarted the upset big period and led to untold stress during the moving process.

Anyway, the kids had fun watching them bring the shingles down the driveway on a forklift that morning before we left for school and work.

Almost the same.

The deal with this particular roofing company is that they finish the job in one day. That didn't actually happen though, and they packed up and left for the night having not quite finished the area around the skylights in the kitchen. As fate would have it, it rained that night, a lot. When Zac went downstairs in the morning, there was water in the kitchen. It turns out that the roofers hadn't covered the area where they didn't quite finish. (Seems like roofing 101 would teach you to ALWAYS COVER THE ROOF BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN IT MIGHT RAIN.)

Zac quickly cleaned it up before the kids came down. Only later that afternoon did we poke around a bit more and notice the water stains on the ceiling, the paint bubbling on the window frame, and even water down in the vent. So Zac called the person in charge and he agreed to pay to have everything fixed. It just took a lot of Zac's precious time though--he has to be at the house every time these contractors come, and everything seems to happen in multiple phases. First, they send someone to look at it. Then a couple days later they send someone to actually do the work. Then something goes wrong, and you have to get the person to come back to fix it again (that's what happened with getting wiring to the upstairs rooms so they could have ceiling lights). So it's slow progress.

But, we have a nice new roof and three updated skylights at the end of it.

The Fight-Over Lamp

On Tuesday, college counseling was doing a session with my students all day, so Zac and I planned to both take the day off and go furniture shopping.  It ended up working out perfectly because this morning we were also scheduled to go to the lawyer's office to sign the closing documents for the Ryan Road house. So we did that first thing, then spent the rest of the day at Lowe's and furniture stores. The problem is that we really love modern furniture, but it is way too expensive. At a regular furniture store, we picked out a mid-century modern sectional couch we liked and got a horrifying estimate of how much it would cost. So after spending a day shopping, we ended up agreeing to just buy a couch online from Wayfair, because it would be way cheaper.

But the day was not a total loss. The last place we went was this awesome consignment store called the Chesire Cat under Cameron Village, that we found entirely on accident. We'd never been in it before, but it was amazing. It was huge and had a ton of great old stuff like original mid-century modern furniture and this tray that particularly tickled my fancy for some reason.

We had a lot of self control until we saw The Lamp. It was love at first sight, and we decided to get it. We couldn't quite decide if it was beautiful, or so hideous that it was cool again. At the checkout desk, another lady was in line behind us, and we were chatting with her about it and she said, "Yeah, it's kind of like the leg lamp."

After we picked up the kids from daycare and kindergarten and were nearly home, we told them about our day and how we'd only gotten one thing, but it wasn't a couch. Zac said, "We got an awesome lamp. This is going to be the thing you two fight over when we die." We then had to discuss with Alice at length about how we weren't actually going to die for a long time.

When we got home, Zac got the lamp out of the van and carefully carried it to the front door. Simon, who hadn't appeared to be paying attention to our earlier conversation, saw it and said with great excitement, "Is that the fight-over lamp?"

And that, great-grandchildren, is how The Fight-Over Lamp got its name.

Alice on two wheels

Alice would randomly ask to have the training wheels taken off her bike for the last couple of weekends, but always at the wrong time (as we were going in) and when Zac wasn't around to actually do it. So finally, on this lovely Sunday morning, I remembered to tell Zac that Alice wanted to try and ride her bike without training wheels. He took them off and we went to the perfectly flat, not-crowded greenway right by our house. We took turns hunting for bugs with Simon and running and pushing Alice on her bike. Within a half hour she had it down pat, and was even able to start herself. The secret to getting a kid to ride a bike is to have the bike be way too small for them, that way they can touch the ground easily. Alice only crashed once or twice, because she could just put her feet down. Also, the bike can't go very fast, so she couldn't lose control.

I can remember learning to ride a bike, on a bike that was too big and I remember getting going finally and then having trouble stopping and just turning up someone's driveway and crashing.  It's weird to think that I can remember parts of life that Alice is now experiencing herself (as opposed to the baby years which nobody remembers). Everything is on the permanent record from here on out.

It was so exciting to watch her reach this milestone! She was all smiles the whole time.

Home Depot workshop

On the first Saturday every month, Home Depot blocks off an aisle of the store (woe to those looking for lumber this morning) and turns it into a workshop where kids can come in and do a little building project for free. This was our first time ever doing it, and the kids loved it. I hated it because it was noisy (all that hammering!) and chaotic (kids everywhere!) and messy (the paint!). I was alone with the kids at first so Zac could shop for stuff for fixing up the new house. Tragically, all his work was undone as he stashed his cart somewhere when he came to check on us and either A) Someone Took It or B) He Couldn't Find It.