Selling the Car / Buying the Van

Felicity turned two this year, which means that when we fly, we have to buy four tickets instead of three. So when planning our Utah vacation this summer, we decided to drive. Which...necessitated a new car. We had two hatchbacks. The Malibu Maxx is quite spacious, but still only has five seats. And the Impreza was super tiny. Here are some pictures of our seriously hail-damaged Subaru (the first is from when it was first damaged, before we bought it) - we called it the pickle car because of all the massive dents.

Surprisingly, this was our more valuable car, worth around $7000-8000. To get a larger vehicle, we felt this was our best bet to get the cash, so we sold it. It took several months, and we were worried it wouldn't happen before our trip, but it did. Then we were worried we wouldn't be able to find a van in that time that would fit out needs and budget, but we did, with just a couple days to spare! We found this beauty: a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country Limited (meaning, it has ALL the options on it), with 98k miles on it, and I got it for $3750.

It needed new tires right off the bat, a new radiator, and a little love, but it is running great. All the power doors work, it has a sunroof, I got the DVD player working for a little bit (before it broke again), and sprayed all the rusty spots with rust converter. It's not super pretty, but it is good for us, and is way cheaper than buying a new one. To make it worth it from a month-to-month cost perspective, I figured it needs to hold out for about 2 years without any more major issues. Anything beyond that is gravy. Woot!

Preschool and Getting into Kindergarten

In the fall of 2015, Scarlett started preschool. She only attended half days, twice a week, but her teachers were still amazed at how smart she was, even asking at a parent-teacher meeting to confirm her age, because they thought she must be older. Nope, just a genius.

So we assumed that she would easily get in to kindergarten in the fall, though her birthday (Sept. 8) was one week past the cut-off for school, and she had to go through the "early-admittance" process. Turns out, the process was harder than the one I went through for college. There was a written application, a test with two administrators that tested her knowledge of stuff like letters and numbers, etc. And then a separate intelligence test administered by a school psychologist. She failed.

We were very upset, and since learning more about the process (calls with the principal who was in the first test, a school administrator, and the psychologist who administered the second test), we're even more ticked off about it. Apparently, for those kids wanting to enter kindergarten "early," they say they want them to be in the gifted and talented program all the way through school, and the scores they require on those tests show that.

But if you pester them enough about it, they'll talk straight. The last person I talked to said they see kids who don't make the age cutoff as "skipping a grade," so they essentially make them meet the requirements a first grader would need to have, not a kindergartner. Scarlett scored 117 - she needed 125 (apparently to qualify for first grade). So...yeah. We're working with her this year, so she can be super bored next year in kindergarten learning things she already knows.

Oh well, this gives her another year to do her job of "having fun and being a kid," as she likes to say. Here are some fun photos from preschool this year. They had a couple mom-kid and dad-kid parties, and the last photo kills me.

Mom's Graduation

This was a fun one for me. A few years ago, my mom went back to school. She's worked really hard, and completed her associate's degree. My siblings convinced her that she needed to walk, and she said she would. I'm not sure when that conversation happened - I didn't find out until it was a little later on, and didn't think I would be able to make it (time off, expensive to fly from Minnesota, kids, etc.).

But after talking with Kristen, we both thought it would mean a lot to be able to be there. After all, she's been there for me with all my graduations - seriously, I had joy school graduation, eighth grade graduation, high school, college, masters... Anyway, so I secretly bought a ticket and flew to Utah. I was thinking I would surprise most of my family, but my brothers told my dad, and my sister knew...basically everyone except mom. Which was okay - her not knowing was most important anyway. I drove up with my brothers and surprised mom in the hotel room - she was so happy. :)

So...I realized I have no pictures of my own from this...so I stole my sister's (probably one of the only people who reads this blog - sorry Tay!). Anyway, after graduation, Mom and I hung out for the weekend until I had to go back to Minnesota. We went bowling, we went to see Saturday's Warrior, we walked around the new Provo City Center temple grounds, we ate at Costa Vida...twice. Good times.

Mr. Blaine Competition

This is just a small, silly one. But our ward had a "Mr. Blaine Pageant." I don't know if you've been to one of those high school male pageants (we had Mr. THS), but it was something like that. We had a costume, snowsuit (instead of swimsuit), dance off, and formal wear / interview. I went for some extra cuteness on the costume and went as Flynn Rider, with my own Rapunzel (Scarlett) up there with me. My friend Bryce is from Florida, so he actually wore a swimsuit and sandals (and a shirt - it was still cold), since that is his type of snowsuit down south. For the dance off, I accessorized with some gold sunglasses and a visor I had flipped upside down. It was epic. Unfortunately, Kristen was also playing hostess, so we don't have many pictures. But guess who won??

Ice Skating

One of the great things about winter in Minnesota is all of the outdoor ice skating rinks. They just flood them with water and poof - you have instant ice rinks. Plus all the lakes that freeze over.

This year Scarlett decided she wanted to learn how to ice skate, so we found some inexpensive skates online, and enrolled her in some beginner ice skating classes. It was a surprisingly warm winter, so we didn't have much time to keep skating after the lessons were over, but she really liked it. You know, when she wasn't getting mad about falling down.

Florida Cruise

Yeah, so I wasn't great at that whole resolution thing. But hey, I'm catching up on what we've been doing this year. First up, the cruise!

In my previous work role, I traveled quite a bit to trade shows, one of which was in Tampa, Florida in January. It was a nice respite from the cold Minnesota winter to head down there and put on shorts for an outdoor RV show. This year, Kristen and I decided to take a cruise in conjunction with the show.

I flew her down at the end of the show and picked her up the night before the cruise. The next morning, we dropped off the rental car at the airport and took a shuttle down to the pier and got on our ship! We took a Royal Caribbean cruise to Key West and Cozumel (though the sea was too rough to make it into port at Key West, so just Cozumel). It was SO nice. We lay on deck chairs reading books, sat in the hot tub and watched movies, ate tons of delicious food, went mini golfing, played shuffleboard, rock climbed, went scuba diving and driving a buggy around the island, and just relaxed. Here are some pictures of our adventures.