I was inspired to get caught up with the blog. And then I was overwhelmed by my own lack of blogging. And then I had so much fun looking back over the last 2 months of pictures.  So in this post, let's cover 2 major family developments. The Deck and The Car! 

If you were paying attention, back in August we started demolishing the deck.  Chris had a willing, and sometimes helpful crew.

 He did the majority of the work, cutting and removing each piece. He stopped to take this picture, his last glass of wine on the old deck.

 We worked together to load all of the pieces into a dumpster. And we bid farewell to the old deck!

 On the first day of school, the crew came to start the deck.  It was a fairly slow process, as it seemed each time they did anything, they had to wait a day or more for the city inspector to come out and approve their work.

 But day by day we watched it grow. And, since school was back in session, there was great excitement every day around 4pm when Chris and the girls came home to see what had changed while they were gone.

First glass of wine on the new deck

Peeking out an upstairs window as they installed the first deck boards

 And finally, it was done! It is a slightly different shape, and it feels HUGE. Currently it is covered in a thick blanket of leaves. But we are looking forward to MANY hours spent on the deck next summer.  And oh, yes, now we need to do all the landscaping that we've ignored, reasoning that it would be a waste to landscape if we were planning to do the deck.........

 The other major development of the month of September was the death of our beloved Stratus. Chris and I bought the Stratus in Iowa in 2001. It has always been the "no kid" car. We traded cars based on who needed the car seats in the red car. The Stratus had served us well. Just over 98000 miles. According to Kelly Blue Book, it was worth around $1000.   But we took it in for a horrible grinding sound and discovered it needed $1000 in new brakes  and other things. It was time to declare the Stratus, DNR. Thank you faithful Stratus!  

 Our mechanic actually bought it from us for $1000, saving us the trouble of driving it without brakes and trying to convince someone else that it really was worth $1000. (Who needs brakes?)

 So, we spent a frantic week, driving a rental, researching minivans. I, of course, have been dreaming of a minivan since before Abby was even a dream, let alone a reality. So I knew a little of what I wanted. In the end, I drove 2, loved 1, and talked with 4 dealerships to negotiate my best price. I even took the 3 girls, and their car seats, on a solo trip to test drive one of the cars. (Considerably more complicated than my solo trip while all 3 were in school - Go figure!)

Snapped this while parked during our test drive

 We ended up with the 2013 Toyota Sienna that the girls and I tested. It is everything I hoped it would be and more.

 Safe, spacious, fresh, clean, new, spacious, pretty, functional, spacious. THE SPACE!

We've put 1000 miles on it in its first month and have no complaints at all! We love the new car!