Retail Therapy

Well we kind of had another minor blow this past week.  So we may or may not be crazy cat people. Some of you know we have several stray kitty friends that we have been feeding for a while now. And by several, I mean like eight. It started out with just Gray Kitty. But then word got around the 'hood and soon we were having daily visits from Doodles, Blinky, Chuck Norris, Murph, Tex, Warlock...I know I am leaving someone out. Well, our little buddy Warlock decided he was done being a stray and wanted to come in and live with us. We did some checking around and tried to find a home for our new friend. But we were told it's "kitten season" and the likelihood of someone adopting a scrappy black kitty were slim. We decided maybe we'd take him to the vet, get him checked up and healthy and he could stay living here with us. Unfortunately, at the vet Ron found out that Warlock was a very unhealthy kitty and had feline leukemia and HIV. The only recommendation was to put him down.

Warlock was making himself at home in his last days at our house. He had taken to sleeping on the car out of reach of his nemesis, Blinky. Of all the cats Warlock was the friendliest, and the only one who would let us pet him. We have been told that it is pretty likely that all the cats are infected. We have essentially been perpetuating a kitty epidemic. It only took a couple days for everyone to stop coming around once the food bowl was gone. We will definitely miss our little buddy Warlock.

To help us get over the loss we decided to spend a lot of money this weekend. ;-) Our first order of business, a new car. We traded in the Impala for a 2011 Hyundai Sonata:

 

I joke about this, it was not an impulse buy. I think we definitely did our due diligence when I came to researching and making the decision. We test drove the Honda Accord and Ford Fusion as well. We checked out the Camry too, but never drove one; we didn't think we could get it in our price range. The Fusion and the Sonata are tied for first in the mid-sized car class. We really just liked the Sonata the best, for the looks and performance. If you'll allow me a moment to geek out... They have engineered the engine of the Sonata so that you get more horsepower from the 4-cylinder than the other two models we drove. In order to get to that HP in the Accord or Fusion we would have had to go to the V6 which put us at a higher price and lower gas mileage. Jeesh, I'm such a nerd. Anyway, we love the new car, and XM Radio.

We decided now that we have a new car we needed to get to get baby Rowe's car seat for it. Obviously. I mean she is going to be here in like 3 months. So yesterday we took a little road trip to St Louis to hit up Babies R Us. We knew that we were going to buy the stroller/car seat combo. If you catch me on Facebook at all you know I am slightly obsessed with the show Extreme Couponing right now. Well, we had a coupon for the system, which saved us over $60. Yay! We ended up deciding on a Chicco travel system. I put it together this morning. Love it! I cannot wait to take our baby girl for walks in it. We also bought her bedding, a few more clothes, and worked on adding items to the baby registry. A process that was not nearly as much fun as I had imagined it would be. First of all, it was like 106 degrees in the store; not a good idea when your main clientele is pregnant women! Secondly, there is A LOT of stuff for babies. I mean A TON! And as first time parents we really have no idea what you actually need and what is just extra crap. It is quite overwhelming. We had to take a break in the middle and go get a snack. But overall, I think we did pretty well. If you check out the registry you might be able to tell that I left daddy unsupervised in the toy aisle with the scanner gun. Of course nubbin will need 26 teethers and a bunch of Baby Einstein toys, right? :-) How do you think we ended up with 18 packages of Oreos from our wedding registry?

Our little nubbin has been cooking for 26 weeks now. We are less than 100 days from meeting her. Our next appointment with our doctors here in Columbia is next week. Then we will head to St Louis around the first week of July for appointments with doctors there. I hope we will be able to put together a plan for delivery, and maybe go ahead and schedule it.

Oh, one other thing. Thank you so much to our Lafayette friends Ben And Heather who bought us a farmshare for this summer. Basically it is our own little farmers market. We went and picked up our first delivery Saturday morning. Fresh local veggies included, lettuce, asparagus, radishes, kale and some green onions. And some yummy strawberries. I am so looking forward to getting farm fresh food this summer and trying some things I might not normally buy.  Oh and did I mention they have puppies? The farmers have a litter of 13 chocolate labs they are trying to find homes for. So cute. Luckily they only had pictures, no pups. Huge thank you once again Ben and Heather for the generous gift! Love you guys!

Oops. Another super long post. Maybe If I blogged more often I wouldn't have to bore you all with these loooonnnngggg posts. I'll work on that.