I think Penny might be in denial that she is now two, growing up is hard:
On Sunday Tyler made Penny an amazing, pink, high heel shoe cake. Penny loves putting on shoes, especially dress up high heel shoes, so we thought this would be the perfect cake for her. For her first birthday she had a pants cake, this year shoes and maybe next year a shirt cake?
We invited our neighbors over that night to help us sing to Penny and help us eat the cake. Though we loved having friends over, Penny found it overwhelming and burst into tears as soon as we all started to sing. You can tell from the pictures below that she didn't appreciate Tyler putting fire right next to her face either. But you can also tell that she absolutely no qualms with eating the cake.
Our sweet neighbors got Penny a baby doll (one of her favorite things) and a super fun board book called Little Pea (that Lucy loves and has confiscated).
We love our Penny! She is a challenging, spirited, emotional little thing who keeps me on my toes. But she also gives the best snuggles when she wakes up, has the sweetest little puppy dog eyes when she wants something, is such a sweet mommy to all her baby dolls and has the cutest little crooked smile. She is really good at adding in the "cha cha chas" for a birthday song (as long as the song is not being sung to her), she loves putting on her own shoes, she loves stealing drinks from everyone's water bottles and pretty much any toy can become a phone in her eyes.
On Tuesday we went and saw Disney's remake of "Pete's Dragon" as a family. It was cute movie and the kids did good during it but on the drive home our van decided to start making some crazy thumping noises and then it just died on us. Penny was not happy about being stranded as you can see in the pictures, it was bedtime after all.
We were hopeful that maybe the fuel gauge was just off and that we really had just run out of gas so we called a friend in the ward and asked him if he could bring us gas. After filling the tank and attempting to start the van, it became very clear the gas was not the problem. Tyler waited for a tow truck and our friend loaded us up and took us home. It was a definite bummer that this happened but at least the weather was cool and perfect and at least we had great friends who came to our aide:
The next day we found out from the auto shop that our van's motor was dead. It would be $3000 to fix it. Considering it still had the problem of occasionally not starting when it is hot outside, spending $3000 on it just didn't seem worth it at this point. So we decided it was officially time to say goodbye to our van. This was a tough, emotional decision because it meant that instead of using our savings for a house, we were going to now have to use it for a new car. In the long run though, I think it's for the best. Right now we have a pretty high student loan we need to pay off so we are now going to shift our focus from saving for a house to paying off debts so that we are in a better position to buy a house.
After talking things over, it was decided that we were going to search for a Chevey Traverse with AWD. Something that could help me conquer those rough snowy winters and something that Tyler would know well and have plenty of people to consult with about if something went wrong. After hunting online, I found two cars that fitted our criteria and luckily they were both located at the same place. The one we were leaning towards had 25,000 miles and it was a 2013. But we ended up getting the 2012 with 40,000 miles because it had captain seats (so the kids wouldn't be climbing over a seat to get in the back and it was a LT which meant it had some good extra features like heated seats and a remote starter.
The kids were actually super behaved and the whole experience went really smoothly and we are now the proud owners of a Chevy Traverse. It is definitely not as spacious as my mini van but it certainly is a lot more pretty:
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