New Car, a Big Baby, Pokemon GO! and a Firework Fire

For starters, we went to visit the OBGYN a couple weeks ago for a 3rd trimester ultrasound. Everything looked great, and it appears that "Lil' Paul" as we occasionally call him may not actually be so little. He's measuring about 3 weeks ahead of where his due date anticipated he should be, which doesn't surprise me since very large heads as babies runs in my family and Paul was a 9-something pound baby when he was born. According to the pregnancy app I have on my phone, Lil' Paul is about between 17 and 19 inches at this point, and might weight between 4 and 6 pounds (most likely the 6 in his case.) He's gaining a half pound a week and I'm gaining a half pound in amniotic fluid and placenta mass etc., so thing are going at quite a clip at this point (and I'm sure feeling it!)

We got to *sort of* see Lil' Paul's face on the ultrasound, and he sure looks cute to me! Just a little over a month before we get to meet him, instead of just get kicked in the ribs by him. You can see we're still at somewhat of a loss for what to call him, since the nickname changes pretty much every blog post. Still open to suggestions!

We had a lot of fun a week ago with Paul's sister Becca (who lives out here now and it's great to have her here) when we went to a place called "The Puppy Barn" in American Fork. It's essentially a store where they get rotations of puppies from breeders all around the area, and have them there for people to hold, cuddle, and buy. It was so much fun to hold the lil' guys! We had a few favorites while we were there for sure. As a friend of ours who recently went there said, "Don't take in your wallet - or you'll definitely leave with a puppy." Good thing we didn't, cuz our car broke down shortly thereafter and we needed all our cash!

At the puppy barn - this was one of my favorites. He was some sort of Yorkshire Terrier mix (as a teenager I had a yorkie and he was the best.) I really like terriers a lot.

Paul interacting with some puppies - they kept them in these large open containers so people could just reach down and hold them.

This was my absolute favorite one. He's a border collie/Australian heeler mix, and was absolutely precious. Very cuddly and kept licking me the whole time. Also one of the cheaper ones at $350 instead of the running rate of $1,000 something for a lot of the other breeds there.

Becca and me with some English springers (I think that's what they were.)

Paul with my favorite one. Soon that's gonna be a baby he'll be holding :)

Paul really liked the German Shepherd ones. I like German Shepherds, but we'll probably stick with "smaller" dogs while we still have young kids around just to be safe - not too small though. Corgis are kind of our current dream breed to start of with.

This lil guy was some sort of Maltese or something and was determined to eat my hair. I think small dogs are cute but it can be hard to find "smart" ones with real personalities sometimes.

I'm really not too hard to please - when it comes to hanging out with puppies or dogs or cats or kittens, that will definitely make my day. We had a lot of fun.

The two cars side-by-side, our old Toyota Corolla that bit the dust and our new Toyota Matrix.

And now I will tell the saga of our first time car shopping. This has a happy ending, but was quite the process. For starters, we had issues with the Corolla beginning a few weeks ago when it began overheating out of the blue (we've never had an issue with this car) and when Paul checked on the fluids, sure enough, the oil and coolant were both completely dry. 

Normally the car did burn oil quickly, but not THAT quickly, and when we took it in to the mechanic it turned out it had a blown head gasket and even if we had replaced the radiator, the engine would have killed it very quickly. The mechanic we went to (who is very nice and we trust them a lot - Master Muffler and Break in Provo) told us he was sorry for the bad news since we obviously have a baby on the way, but that it would likely be best to just get a new car since replacing the engine and radiator would cost as much or more than the car's even worth.

So, we thought about our options. We could wait for a while and just try to make it without a car for a while and really search the market thoroughly for several months, but as we searched for several days we realized a few things about the car market around the area (and my desire to have a car ASAP went way up because the whole week it's been in the 90's and the prospect of walking around in that pregnant was NOT appealing.)

First, we definitely wanted another Toyota or possibly a Honda car, because those ones have the best rep for running the longest and performing the best. We eventually narrowed it down to either a Corolla (safe choice) or Matrix. We liked the hatchback design a lot (and it was comparable in price to similar Corollas) and decided to go take a look at a few Matrixes (Matrices? hahaha) around at various dealers.

Our car search began on city buses in the 90+ degree heat, getting shuttled to various dealerships.The first one we went to had a bright yellow Matrix. The color was a bit of a turn-off for us, and as we drove it around we noticed it had a few mechanical issues like the RPM's dropping below where they should have been. We drove back to the place and put it on a "possibility" list, but we weren't sold on it.

One other dealership we went to was suggested to us by a friend and turned out to be a massive Toyota dealership with a ton of mostly new cars and just some used ones. We met up with the car salesman who our friend suggested, and he started talking with us about what we were interested in. We told him we couldn't afford a car any newer than a 2009 most likely and that we had a small budget to work with. He then proceeded to look on his computer for 20 minutes or so and kept asking us, "Do you want a new car? Are you sure you don't want a new car?" and we very strongly asserted that we did not, in fact, want a new car. After a long time he showed us a 2007 Carolla, and we got in and were driving it around the lot and were relatively impressed. It had good A.C. and seemed to be driving well, etc. 

As we drove it back up to the main lot, however, we suddenly noticed a very foul burning smell coming from the car. We rolled down the window and Becca, who was standing outside, said she could smell it as well. We asked the salesman about it and he said he didn't know what it was and that they'd get it looked into. After stepping outside of the car, the car salesman said to us, "Well, you let me know if you're interested, but you might want to act soon because this one might get sold fast!" Paul and I kind of looked at each other and laughed because the notion of that car, with its burning engine, selling really fast and decided to go back to looking at Matrixes.

We were then bussed over to another place with a grey Matrix. After driving it for a bit and decided we liked it better than the yellow one, and it was at a better price. This place also had a 4.9 rating on Facebook, meaning it was almost perfect. We were both a little dubious about that. The next day we decided to go to one more place with a different grey Matrix and see if we liked it better. Becca kindly gave us a ride and we proceeded to drive that one around. It had higher mileage, but ran a lot smoother and didn't have any of the problems the other two seemed to have. We were pretty sold on it. 

We took both the grey Matrixes in to our favorite mechanic and he told us the one we really liked seemed to be a pretty good bet. Although its miles were kind of high, there weren't any mechanical problems with it and it seemed to check out pretty well. We then took in the second Matrix from a dealership down the street, and afterwards the mechanic came and told us it was definitely a "lemon." He said he doesn't trust the dealership down the street the car came from and said they do sketchy things just to get cars to pass inspection. We took the car back to the dealership and said it was a no go, and then we discovered that dealership's owner and the mechanic seemed to have some sort of beef with each other. We definitely trusted the mechanic more, however, because we'd taken our car to him multiple times and he and his team had always given us honest assessments of what we should do, often for free. Plus, their agenda wasn't to sell us a car.

Paul enjoying the folding down seat feature in our Matrix. There have definitely been enough times we needed that option in the Corolla and didn't have it that we're quite pleased.

After some more deliberation, we decided on the first Matrix that checked out well with the mechanic. We wanted to get a car loan to try and improve our credit (looking to the future for buying a house, etc.) and the dealership recommended a place nearby to us that had good reviews. We ended up buying the car outright for $5,000, and after having it for a few weeks we're pretty pleased. we like the body of the car better than the Corolla (especially for the trunk space) and it's really nice to have a slightly newer car that doesn't feel like it's about to rattle to pieces when it goes over 50 mph. We're very grateful to have a good car!

It even has a red stripe down the side, but you can't really see it here.

Independence Day was fun for us this year, especially because we thought we had missed out since they set off fireworks on the Saturday before the 4th in Provo and apparently that's really all Provo does, but we missed them because you have to pay for a concert to really see them and I was indoors sick (been sick for over 2 weeks now with a fever initially and now very intense coughing - trust me, I'm super over it) so we thought we had missed out on fireworks this year. After a little bit more research, however, we discovered that Thanksgiving Point would be doing some. We asked Brooke (my sister) and Becca if they'd like to go with us. When we got there, we wandered around for a bit and set up our spot we'd watch the fireworks from. They had a big festival set up, and several nice gardens free to the public (if we were rich enough I'd love to have a pass to go walk around in their paid gardens more, but it's expensive so we don't) which was enjoyable.

In some pretty gardens at Thanksgiving Point. The place was obviously set up for weddings.

They had some very weird, floofy pink, cotton-candy-like flowers there on a tree.

Becca with some goats they had barely within reach at a "farm" exhibit at Thanksgiving Point.

Baby goats are so fun!

As darkness set in we decided to head back to our blanket and chair set-up to get ready to watch the fireworks. Paul and I were pretty surprised, but we ended up having a pretty impressive pre-show to the Thanksgiving Point fireworks because multiple people/venues/businesses were setting off impressive aerial fireworks as soon as dusk fell. We could even see them up on the mountainside which was entertaining while we waited. 

Watchin' fireworks.

Once the actual Thanksgiving Point show started, it lasted for about 45 minutes with some very large and impressive fireworks. They had a very large area roped off as a "fallout zone" for falling ash. As the show continued, we quickly saw why, because some of the fireworks were very large and a lot of still-glowing embers falling in the area. There were a couple of shed-like buildings in the fall-out zone, and sure enough, one caught fire and went up very quickly. That was almost as exciting as the fireworks honestly, since it was very thoroughly burnt by the time a small firetruck actually got there.

That orange glowing mass was the building up in flames. It was about a quarter mile away from us, and was actually pretty big.

Another big thing that's happened lately is the release of "Pokemon GO," a cell phone application that allows users to run around catching "Pokemon" in the real world. We've been having a lot of fun with it, running around to different places (think of geocaching - it follows kind of similar principles) and catching Pokemon. There are certain areas that have extra bonuses/you can potentially catch more Pokemon, including the downtown Provo library. We saw a ton of people all gathered there and knew that they were all catching Pokemon, so we went over and joined in. We saw a few friends there and sat with them for a while, catching Pokemon on our phones. It's been fun to look around campus and see people walking around, staring at their phones which definitely means they're playing Pokemon. It's certainly getting all the nerds to get out and go walking, which is a rare thing!

A ton of fellow nerds catching Pokemon on their phones at the downtown Provo library. We had fun there, and the crowd got even bigger after we were there for about an hour.

Becca was a good sport and walked around with us for a bit while we caught Pokemon. This is kind of what the app does - superimposes Pokemon in various locations over your phone's real-world camera. Becca's Pidgey impression is spot-on.

Other than that, at this point it feels like Lil' Paul or Pablito or Rolly has dropped into the birth canal, so it's really starting to feel close now! We're packing a hospital bag and getting ready for his arrival. Things are certainly getting real now!

As a final cute thought, here's my nephew Elliot peeking out from behind a chair.