Happy Belated Birthday!

I'm 16 months old now!

My hectic schedule sometimes requires me to do my photoshoot away from my studio (aka my crib). If you look closely, you'll notice I have a sweater and a stuffed cat now. The east coast is cold! Well actually just my grandparent's house. They like to keep it cold.

Never getting lost again.....priced under $100

GPS navigation units are finally becoming commoditized goods. The nuvi 200 seen here is the entry level Garmin Nuvi GPS. OfficeMax has it on sale for $130 this week and I had a $50 Bestbuy coupon that they accepted bringing the price to $86 OTD. The Nuvi 205 is the update to the 200 and features a faster processor, slightly different screen layout, MSN direct capability, and a few other differences. However, the 205 hasn't been on sale recently at Bestbuy or another place that will accept their coupon. I happened to try OfficeMax and sure enough they said they'll accept the coupon. So if you are in the market for a good inexpensive GPS, I'd take advantage of the coupon which expires at the end of the year.

Personal shout out

My blog shout out to Wyatt! Are you going to be in Vegas for the holidays?

New car....well sort of

After months of test driving SUVs, we finally bought a used car or as the dealers like to call them pre-owned vehicles. We bought a 2007 RX350 AWD with navigation from a private party which means we didn't pay sales tax. If you buy anything from the dealer you have to pay tax. The only way to get any backup sensor or camera was to get the navigation otherwise we would have skipped it. The original owners put on some aftermarket wheels which at first I didn't really need but now I like them just for the fact that we can tell our RX apart from the million others on the road. You don't notice how many others there are until you actually own one.

Other cars that we test drove; CRV, Rav4, Highlander, Murano, Rogue, RDX, Santa Fe, Veracruz, XC90, EX35, and FX35.


Here you can see the navigation system which also has bluetooth. If you look closely, you can also see that the CD player has WMA and MP3 playback. If you look closely again, you'll see the tape player! That's right a tape player. I'm sure they would have put in an 8 track player too if they still made them. Lexus must think that their customers still have a strong desire to play tapes where as most vehicles these days have an aux in as standard equipment. Lexus instead charges $300 to enable an Ipod adapter. But hey they have a tape deck. On the bright side, I can now play all my new wave mix tapes from high school and college. Now where did I put those....

Baby Poang

How does this go again? Maybe I have it upside down.



Good thing these instructions don't have any words. I can't read yet!



That was too easy!



Finally I have something comfortable. This chair is going to help my back soooo much. I swear this baby just eats, sleeps, and poops.

New Wheels!

Finally I can go cruising at the mall and not be embarrassed by my stroller. My parents were actually using a Winnie the pooh walmart special they picked up in Seattle. The thing was so cheap the front wheel wouldn't turn right. Mom and Dad picked up a Maclaren 2008 Quest Sport from bestbuybaby.com (they are an authorized retailer although the website doesn't look like it). For 2008, Maclaren changed the seat belt to a 1 button release, changed the foot brake, changed the wheel hubcaps, and added a strap for easy carrying.

I'm 15 months old now!

Boy a lot has happened to me this past month. I visited my first ER, gave my first hug, and was featured in a slide show on our local paper's website.

Lauren's first trip to the ER

Lauren had a high fever even after visiting the doctor earlier today so we went to the ER. After waiting 3 hrs we finally saw a doctor. Lauren had her first x-rays and IV (seen here).

Update: We finally left the ER at 2am with Lauren's fever down and the same diagnosis as our regular doctor -- a viral infection. However, we were told to alternate between tylenol and motrin every 3 hrs to control the fever better. That seems to be working.

Snip snip

We took Lauren to get her first haircut since she was starting to sport a baby mullet. Here she's watching some TV before her big cut at Snipits.


Some bubbles to help make sure Lauren is looking down.

Dog wanted!

We seriously need to get a dog! I've got better things to do like play with my peeps.

Cat and mouse

Well at least Arizona's version. We haven't seen scorpions in the house in a long time since the cats usually eat them but we did find this baby scorpion. It's probably only a 1/4" to 1/2". I wonder where mommy is at though.

I'm 14 months old now!

I can now make chicken and cow sounds whenever I want although mostly when Mommy and Daddy ask me to.

Where's the doggie?

What do you mean we don't have a dog? Who's been eating all of the food I've been throwing on the floor then?

Fancy thermometer

We just bought the Exergen temporal artery thermometer off Ebay. The thermometer scans across your forehead and so far seems to be pretty accurate. We got it so that taking Lauren's temp would be a lot easier and it'll allow us to avoid having to ever place a thermometer in that "accurate" area.

Floating Ladybug

Lauren is enjoying a little swim in her new ladybug float. She starts her official swimming lessons tomorrow.

Car wash now open

The shower glass was finally installed just before July 4th. We ended up with 3/8" thick glass versus 1/2" thick since it's a little cheaper and not as heavy. This way there wouldn't be as much wear and tear on the door hinges. We also used pivot door hinges on the top and bottom by CRL instead of side mounted hinges so that all of the weight would be supported by the bottom hinge.




Here you can see the shower in action. We have 3 separate heads; 1 fixed (the heavenly shower head), 1 rain, and 1 handheld. All three have their own volume control and I removed all of the water restrictors since I can control the volume using the valve.

Baby Dyson needed

"So this is vacuuming. You are right, this is so much fun. You mean I get to do this as much as I want."

The training has begun.....

Almost done

Do it yourself closet systems

We looked at 3 different closet system companies. California Closets and two online companies, easyclosets.com and closetstogo.com. California closets was nice but pretty pricey. One thing California closets had going for them were these pull out hamper bags. We liked these a lot better than the tilt out hamper or even wire baskets. Easyclosets and closetstogo were both significantly cheaper than California closets but you have to install the system yourself. We ended up going with closetstogo.com primarily because they had a better mounting brackets for the side panels (more like California closets hardware) and the fact that you could also get the exact same hamper bags as Cal closets minus the Cal closet label.



Here we have three drawers plus a pull out hamper. Installation wasn't too difficult but it did take a while. Removing all of the pieces from the boxes took 3 hours by itself.


Here's the exact same drawer and hamper section plus our only long hanging section.


I think someone needs to go shoe shopping now....maybe I shouldn't have gotten so many shelves. By putting in a pocket door, we were able to utilize the wall space for shelves. Much better use of the space than before.