the essence

First things first, we're keeping the van! It had a couple little things that they found in the inspection, nothing huge though, and Ray went to the dealer we bought it from today & renegotiated the contract.

Anyway, I'm very very excited!

Now, for some more updates from our little trip last week. After picking up the girls from my parents we went back to the hotel. One of Addison's favorite things about hotels (after our trip last October) is getting her own bed & Ray hyped up that she could jump on it.



Thursday morning, after Ray finished working, we went to Ikea for breakfast. It was just a few miles away & rather than paying $15 for two drinks & two danishes at the hotel (I'm so not joking, it was ridiculous!) we got the 99-cent breakfast for the girls & the $1.99 breakfasts for us - it was plenty of food! We went back to Ikea later & had hot dogs for lunch. Who knew you could feed a family of four on just $11 when eating out for two meals!?!



I'm not sure what to call this face of Kate's, but she was playing shy & when she turned back to us she was all goofy scrunching her shoulders up!



After leaving Ikea for breakfast we went to the Nordstrom outlet which I didn't even know we had now - talk about amazing prices! Then, Ray had to work & rather than paying another $10 to get Internet in our room he sat in a McDonalds for a couple of hours for the free Wifi & dropped us off at Super Target. Then, after lunch at Ikea, we walked around the store for a bit. I could spend serious time there, I'm already ready to go back!

Our next excursion was taking the girls across the street to Downtown Disney. I told Addison she would get to see princesses there & she was very excited. She was hugging the statues & telling me they were beautiful. Of course, she was also very excited to see the skeleton pirate. I would've thought it would scare her but instead she ran up to it saying, "Look mommy, a pirate!" And, as she grabbed it's skeletal fingers, "He's holding my hand." Megan says she's going to love Tim Burton movies.





After taking the girls to lego land and letting Addison run in the ground fountain even though it was only around 50 degrees outside, we went back to the hotel, gave the girls a warm bath, ordered pizza & had a quiet night in our room.




And, while a bit random, I must include this picture of Ray. This was outside of the elevators on
our floor. Doesn't he look like something out of The Shining?