…and hello blog readers. I actually haven’t forgotten about you. I’ve just been….well, doing all those things that you’re probably doing. The holidays do seem to get busier every year, but accomplishing those holiday related tasks gets exponentially more difficult the more children you have. And I only have two. Imagine if I had five–I probably wouldn’t ever get dressed or feed my family anything other than Papa John’s.
But I’m digressing. I actually logged onto my super slow laptop (just one of the many excuses I find for not even going online these days) to update you on my goings on. Things are mostly about the same: attempting to paint, decorate, declutter the new house is a constant task, schuttling the children to and from playdates, MOPS, Rayna’s school, trying to find the time to make dinner, have friends, talk to the husband without getting interrupted 1,000 times….all the stuff that moms do. But there’s been a couple happy blips in the chaos. In one of my attempts to actually “escape” and have a bit of a date with the husband, I found tickets to see Andre Rieu live in the city!
I love, love, love Andre Rieu. If you haven’t heard of him, you don’t watch PBS. He is a violinist/conductor whose orchestra all wear brightly colored formal attire and play jaunty classical music (lots of waltzes) and perform a little “opera lite”. I have a couple of his DVD’s, my favorite is his live in Tuscany show, which yes, I admit, has some songs that make me cry. I actually saw Andre a few years ago at the Liacouras Center before Rayna was born. This time he was playing the Wells Fargo Center, which must’ve been a bit too big of a venue for him. The surplus of seating made it so that Living Social had a daily deal, $40 tickets to see Andre & I snapped at it.
It was really lovely, and I caught some fun pictures of the concert on my phone that aren’t uploading right now (grr!) During various times they have snow fall (and then dump) on the crowd, balloons come down, people waltz around in the aisles, etc. You should check it out sometime if you’re into combining classical music and fun 😉
The other big event is…I bought a new car. This, actually, is a huge event for me. I have had the same car for the last 10 years. TEN. I bought an ’01 Toyota Rav4 when I was 19 and I’ve plugged along in that thing ever since. Before that was my first car, an unreliable ’87 Thunderbird, so I have to say I was pretty darn attached. I’ve had a few false starts over the years where I’d start looking for a car and then just chicken out. I’m very “path of least resistance” like that. Why get rid of something when it’s paid off and still working fine?
But really we were getting pretty smashed in there. There was barely room for us all to head down to the beach (with Buddie) and have any sort of luggage. That and it was pretty filthy. Marc rags on me for letting Rayna eat just about anything in the car, even Polynesian sauce (which she calls “Paula Nation sauce”, isn’t that cute?) 😉 so imagine what it looked like in there if you remember what Rayna’s car seat looked like.
So what did I go with? A minivan. A VW Routan to be exact. I had been thinking minivan for a while now, since they are obviously so family friendly. The Honda Odyssey was pretty awesome, but with the features we wanted (leather seats, DVD player, etc) it was a small fortune. I’m feeling kinda ok with it so far. Still will take some getting used to…I’m not that happy about it barely fitting in the garage and oh yeah, having to pay for it every month!! But what can you do 
