New Car!!!

I'm sure by now some of you have heard about our new car:

A family in the ward gave it to us and Daniel LOVES it.
Oh, wait... you weren't thinking of that car, huh? Maybe this one?:

That's right, we bought a brand-spanking-new 2010 Hyundai Elantra.
"But wait", you say, "aren't you always whining about how poor you are?" Yes, yes I am. But the last few months taught us we couldn't afford an OLD car anymore. The durango had recently cost us at least 2000, was due for new tires and a $1500 routine maintenance for it's 120k mile mark. For what we've paid for our two old cars in the last 6 months, we could have made almost 2 years in payments on a new car. And we decided to go completely new, rather than slightly used, because we wanted a great warranty. We're so sick of car problems.
The car that wrecked two years ago was an Elantra and we loved it. And Hyundai is just getting better with time- it's got the 4th best resale value on the market. And it only bumped our insurance up 16 dollars per 6 months.
Yes, I am a bit defensive and can go on for a long time to justify this purchase. It took a long while for Kenny to convince me. I don't come from a family that buys new cars. But then, I come from a family with the worst car luck ever.
We're so glad now. A huge weight was lifted from our shoulders. And since I'm going to have to work in one way or another for a while yet just to sustain the necessities of life, we figured we could afford to throw a car into the mix. We got an AWESOME trade-in value on the durango which helped a lot.
So we bought Merlin. He's dark blue, magic, and wears a pointy blue hat:

And yes, it's a decepticon just like the durango was. Merlin-icon?
It's not the gutsiest car- It has a squirrel running on a wheel in the engine. (The durango had a badger. The vespa had a caterpillar. Ask me what kind of engine a car has, and I will tell you it's animal equivelant.) But he's clean, comfortable, and reliable and we're very happy.


(ignore my honkin nose in that last picture).

Busy busy busy

I figured I should let you all know why you'll be seeing even less of me soon. I just picked up another job. An old client emailed me asking if I want to do contractor work for his company (which in turn provides analytics for other companies). I had worked with them before for about a year while I was still consulting and I remember them favorably. I'll work from home and the pay will be about 6 times more per hour than my B&N job, and they say it'll stay under 10 hours a week (I'm dubious about whether or not that's how much I'll work or just how much I'll bill). It's an awesome opportunity to make lots of money quickly, I'm very flattered that they reached out to me with such a generous offer, and I'm thrilled to once again use the 3/4s of my brain I devoted to web analytics knowledge, but... working from home was hard (there was a reason I quit), and I'm already feeling that nagging sensation whenever I'm at home of "are you sure you shouldn't be working right now". Not only that, but with my B&N job I've already been as tired, busy and sore as I've ever been for an extended period of time. I'm going to try to do both as long as possible- working at B&N is good, it makes me happy, and if I keep at it I could get health benefits at last, saving us about 600/month. It's also more predictable in the long run than consulting. So I'll continue doing that in the evenings, about 25 hours/week, then somewhere I'll squeeze in 10 hours of consulting, 168 hours of babies watching, and hopefully some time with my husband at some point...
As for plans for the future... we're clueless. We know that we don't want to get pregnant until we know where we'll be 9 months later (and whether or not we'll have insurance), so it may be a while before our family expands (a plan I will admit I haven't adjusted to very well, logical though it may be). Kenny is currently searching for teaching jobs- mostly in Texas, Oregon and Washington. Unfortunately very few schools will post opening before February or March. Once we know where he'll teach next year, we'll make the decision of whether or not to move. Even if he teaches locally, we may still downgrade so we can save up to move out of Texas in a few years.
Daniel is so much fun. He's currently under the weather, but today aside he's just been a blast lately. He's a great helper, and loves watching sesame street on the computer or movies upstairs (unfortunately he has learned how to pick out which movie he wants, and it usually ends up being the stupid Super Mario Brothers cartoon from the early 90s). His speaking isn't progressing much (I think it may have actually gone backward a bit), though I'm pretty sure he doesn't speak because he spends all his time with me and I understand his grunts/gestures well enough he doesn't see the point in verbalizing. All the same, if things don't change in the next few months we'll go in for a screening and some advice on how to get him talking before he turns 2 in april. Also, if any parents out there want to reassure me that it's perfectly normal for a 21-month-old boy to have a very limited attention span for mealtime, library story time, or church, it would help me out a lot.

In other news, I have about 3 months worth of news, videos and pictures to post. I promise I will someday. Oh, but this is fun. Kenny bought me this Goomba bag from Hot Topic:

It makes me happy.