guess what we got!?!?

k so it's totally been killin me not to blog about this for the past almost month now, but we wanted to keep this a secret until we went down to san diego for joe's sisters wedding. we wanted to pull up in the drive way and say "suprise we got a new car!" no one seemed quite as excited about it as we were of course, but it was fun none the less. so anyways heres the whole story:
a few moths before taylor was born i finally got around to looking for our next car. the 4runner was still running great and was almost at 100,000 miles but with two kids in car seats and the occiasinal babyistting kid, that left me stuck at home. i couldn't fit all three carseats in the back seat :( so i went and looked for something a little bit bigger and fell in love with the honda pilot. they had just come out with the 09 model which offered the rear hatch window to actually pop open without opening the whole entire hatch door. the earlier models didnt offer that feature so i knew i wanted to wait and get a new one rather than getting something used. the pilot was longer than the 4runner with seating for 8 (the pop up third row is awesome) and wide enough to put all three carseats in the middle row and still have seating for more! we didn't want to be stuck with a crazy $500 car payment each month, so we decided to wait a while longer and keep saving.
so about a month ago we see this commercial advertising that honda was doing some cool trade-in program where they will give you blue book value if you had a honda, nissan or toyota. so we went down to check it out and see what kind of deal we could get. my mom told us good luck which was funny. cause to me that meant i hope you come home with a new car, but to joe that meant i hope you dont get stuck buying a new car today LOL but anyways we go down to honda and they check out the 4runner and tell us what they will give us for it. we check out all the pilots they had on the lot and narrow it down to a few that have the features we wanted. joe really wanted to get 4wheel drive just in case we move somewhere that has snow (he's hoping utah, but im hoping NOT). so joe is taking to the salesguy and throws out an offer on the pilot they had in the show room. the guy comes back with a counter offer and joe sticks to his original offer plus requests a few upgrades get thrown in too (not going in the direction the sales guy had hoped for im sure). then joe does the unthinkable! he tells the guy if he gets the car with the upgrades he wants at that offer, then he's got himself a deal! i couldn't believe my ears! did he seriously just say that?! so the guy comes back and they shake on it and HOLY CRAP we just bought a brand new car!!
so here is the beautiful new addition! it is an 09 honda pilot. it's the EX model i think and it's 4wheel drive.it's not leather interior, but the fabric is really nice! they even put in a dvd player that pops down for landen to watch movies for our road trips and let me say it is awesome! it even came with two sets of wireless headphones so he can watch his movie and we dont have to listen to it upfront. it only had 245 miles on it when we drove off, but it's got quite a few more now after a trip down to san diego. i am so in love with it aleady and its beautiful and awesome in every way. i am so lucky to have so many blessings in my life to be able to get this car when we did! thanx hunny you're the best!!

swimmin the summer away!!

so this summer we decided to enroll landen in swim lessons at greenacres park. he loves to be in the water so we figured it would be good exercise for him (so he would maybe even take a nap for me) and would be fun too. the classes only last two weeks so we put him in the beginning toddler class and then right into the advanced toddler class. so he got four weeks full of swimming 5 days a week! im not sure how much he actually learned in the beginning toddler class, but he has really come soo far in the advanced class. he has two teachers and they do an awesome job with the little kids. landen is the youngest in his class of 5 (the other kids are between 4-5) but i think he's doing just as good as they are (even better maybe). tomorrow is actually his last day of lessons and i think we will both be sad to say goodbye. i wasn't planning to put him in lessons next summer because the next level is for kids at least 5 yrs old. he will only be 4.5 by then, so i wasn't going to make him repeat the advanced toddler class again. today his swim teacher actually informed me that she thinks he is advanced enough to move up to the level 1 class next year even though he wont be old enough!! i wasn't totally excited and super proud of him! so hopefully next summer he will get to go to swim lessons again and learn even more!! these are a couple videos from my dad's house. he was having so much fun and i was attempting to catch it on film :) enjoy


i cant believe he has actually figured out how to come up for air and keep swimming without being able to reach the bottom! i didn't know kids his age could swim this good already. maybe i just haven't been around enough small kids with pools but i think ive got one skilled swimmer myself :P

of course we can't go swimming without taylor joining us. and it seems like she already likes the water as well. she hasn't figured out how to swim to the bottom yet LOL or how to do flips off the diving board but she's making progress. this was the first time i attempted to dunk her under. please ignore my annoying voice in the background (or even better put your computer on mute before you play the video clip). her face was way better in person but i was just happy that she didn't scream and cry


and a cute pic of dad and his little girl enjoy the cool water on a HOT day in bakersfield