Our New Vehicle

We finally got a new vehicle!! Wrote a check, paid for it and picked it up today :) Here's us signing the paperwork to sell them our minivan and buy the new SUV.
We've been ready to buy a new car since November. Originally we decided that we were going to get another newer minivan - a 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan but then we started thinking about gas prices and we reconsidered. Minivans only get 16-18 mpg and with all of the driving that we do every month our gas budget has just gotten higher.
So then we started looking at cars/SUVs that got better gas mileage. We looked at the Honda Accord, Honda Fit, the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. The last two are hybrid cars that get 45 mpg but they are pretty small. A big step down from the roominess of our minivan. Then we came across the Mercury Mariner Hybrid. It's an SUV hybrid that gets an average of 34 mpg in the city. After checking it out online and finding one (and only one) for sale in the metroplex we decided that that was the car for us!
I got a little sentimental about my old 2003 Ford Windstar with 150K miles on it when we traded it in but the new car was ready to go so I was only sentimental for a bit :)
















Here is our new 2008 Mercury Mariner Hybrid. It has 39K miles and an upgraded interior and we love it!

Happy New Year 2011

This New Year's Eve Ryan and I went to Lara's house for a "Minute to Win It" New Year's party. We snacked on appetizers and Chic Fil A nuggets and then got the games started. Each couple (4 couples in all) had come prepared with supplies for 2-3 games from the gameshow "Minute to Win It". We set the timer and had some fun! To make it a little more competitive each couple put $10 into the pot and the winner took all. Each team got one point for each game won. Some of the games that we played included: Face the Cookie, Hanky Panky, Go the Distance, Marbles Grande, Caddy Stack, Do You Hear What I Hear, and Drop Sink and Clink.

Here are some random pictures from New Year's Eve...

FACE THE COOKIE

Ryan trying to get the cookie from his forehead into his mouth just using his face.

HANKY PANKY
Lara and Ryan trying to empty the tissue boxes one handed.

GO THE DISTANCE
Yami and Ryan rolling the ping pong balls down the tape measure into the shot glasses at distances of 5, 6, and 7 feet.

MARBLES GRANDE

Lara and Ryan and Yami and Justin trying to knock all of the orange ping pong balls out of the hula hoop by throwing white ping pong balls at the one at a time.

CADDY STACK
Bishop and Ryan each gloating over their golf ball stack holding the necessary 3 seconds.

DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR

Marsy and I trying to put the boxes in order from least amount of jingle bells to most. The boxes had 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 jingle bells in them.

DROP SINK AND CLINK
Ryan and I trying to get the quarters into the three shot glasses at the bottom of the fishbowl filled with water.

AND THE WINNER IS....

Welcome to 2011 :)