New Car

Our poor Mazda has been really struggling. It's no wonder, it's almost ten years old and it suffered a fender bender almost four years ago that never left it quite the same. We've been trying to run it for as long as possible. We even decided to keep it when we saw that the car won't run when it's raining (poor Emerson had to figure that out the hard way at about 10:00pm when he had to pull off to the side of the road on his way home from Phoenix). We figured that it doesn't rain that often here, so we held off on replacing it. But we finally broke down (no pun intended) and decided it was time to get a new car when the breaks started acting up (again, poor Emerson found this out the hard way when someone cut him off in the middle of an intersection and he couldn't get the car to stop--luckily he's great at maneuvering cars and was able to jerk out of the way just in time).
I wish I would have taken a picture so you could see the pathetic state that poor car was in. The hood paint was almost all gone, and until recently it didn't have any hubcaps. Inside, though, we kept it really nice. I'm sure the new owners will appreciate that!! :) Poor Emerson called me a few months ago in a panic because one of the Directors of Honeywell wanted to go to lunch with him and wanted Emerson to drive. He was so worried about what the director would say or think when he saw our car. Hahaha...I told Emerson to think of it as a good thing--maybe the director would feel bad for him and decide that he needed to give Emerson a raise!! It didn't work, but at least the director didn't seem to mind!
Anyway, after several weeks of searching, we finally bought a new car (and got a great deal on our trade in!). Here are some pictures of our trusty new Hyundai Sonata.

The seats even move up so that I can see over the wheel! hehe...



I don't know if it was the way this picture was taken, or if it's just a reality check,
but Ana Elisa looks so big and grown up!

Now that we have the car buying out of the way, we decided to make Saturday a clean up the yard day.

Emerson worked out there for about three hours and is still paying for it--his allergies were so bad yesterday and today that he's just miserable. Hopefully, (now that we have a new car I can say this), hopefully it'll rain so that Emerson's allergies can clear up.

Ana Elisa helped Daddy with the yard work and enjoyed an ice cream cone as her reward for being such a great helper!



For those of you who know Ana Elisa well, you know that she is really full of energy. Very little can get her down. She had the croup last week and wasn't feeling well. You'd think she'd want to stay inside and rest (yeah right!), here is what she did as we stayed home so that she wouldn't get any other kids sick...



That's our girl!