Floppy Baby

Here's another video for the fam (and anyone else who wants to watch Laina flop and wiggle and generally act cute).



Do you think she says "Bye Bye" at the end?

I'm losing it

I am seriously losing my mind. Can I blame this on becoming a mom? "Mommy brain" is a term I've heard used lately. In the past month I've lost my health insurance card, my mailbox key and a super cute bib that a friend made for Laina. All of these things must be around here somewhere, I just cannot figure out where. I had my health insurance card when I went to the lab to have bloodwork done. They don't have it there. I vaguely remember the lady handing it back to me and I thought I stuffed it into a pocket or the stroller. I checked the stroller and no luck. I need to go through all my pockets now. The mail key: I remember getting the mail as I was driving home a while back. I think I took the key off my keychain so I could leave the car running cuz Laina was sleeping. Then I either just threw the key in my bag or in the car or in a pocket. Who knows, maybe it is still sitting in my totalled Matrix. I emptied my bag and guess what? I did find a key, but it was not the mailbox key! Weird. And the bib: we went to a friend's baby's birthday party. She made Laina a super cute funky bib. We used it while we were there when we fed Laina. I think I took it off Laina and shoved it in my diaper bag. What is up with my diaper bag being a black hole!?

In other news, I finally got a new car! Yay! Last week the money came in for my old Matrix, so we were able to go out and buy me a new one. It's really amazing, for $200 over what the insurance gave me for my old car, I got a brand spankin' new one! Yes, a new 2008 Matrix. It's grey. It's a 5-speed. And I love it. Jay and I have spent almost the past month looking online at cars. The used Matrixes (or is it Matrices?) are selling for the same or more as a new one! And my old car only had 27,000 miles on it, so I really didn't want to "downgrade" and get something with more miles. I have to admit though, being the frugal person that I am, I'm a little bummed that we spent $200 extra on a car, when our ridiculous gas bill is over $250 for last month. But Jay is convincing me that it's worth it. I will get some pics of the new car up but I have to get out there and take some first. If you search through the archives of the blog though, you can find the pics of my old car from when we got that one, and it looks almost exactly the same. Here is a pic from Toyota's website, which does much more justice to the car than my picture taking skills could anyways:

Car accident/insurance update and Laina Pic Overload

Things are finally getting settled with the accident. The other insurance has finally accepted full responsibility for the accident, meaning that they found the other driver to be 100% at fault. Whew, a big sigh of relief from me. The other good thing that comes along with that is I now have a rental car thanks to the other insurance. We did not have rental coverage on our policy, so USAA wouldn't give us a car. But now that everyone is agreed that the other guy is at fault, his insurance is going to reimburse me for a rental. Now Jay doesn't have to be car-less anymore (being the super awesome husband that he is, he was leaving his car here for me and taking the bus to the light rail station to get to work). The other good thing is that USAA is giving me a very fair price for my car, which I was expecting to have to haggle with them over, but right off the bat they offered me enough to definitely get another car. Now we just have to get all the paperwork situated. So I should have a new car by next weekend. And yes, I am looking for basically the same exact car.

Now, since I can't leave everyone with no pictures, and since I have no more interesting pictures of the accident stuff, I will leave you all with some pics of Laina I've taken recently...

What's this? We got a baby in the mail?

Breakfast

See mom, all gone (umm, I think you missed, what's that on your chin?)

Play time

Fun with diapers

A funny face

Aren't I cute?

Bye bye now, thanks for checking the blog!

Cow Town

A friend and I were walking down the street yesterday to get some lunch and saw a scene much like this one (I didn't have a camera, so this was a photo from last year)

The National Western Stock Show is going on right now in Denver, and apparently every year there is a cattle drive and parade through downtown... Also, unbeknownst to me, everyone is supposed to dress "western" on the day of the cattle drive.

Yeehawww!

Cheapest Gas in the Nation

http://www.9news.com/news/top-article.aspx?storyid=84258

Average price in Colorado: $2.89/ga
Average price in California: $3.33/ga

Jealous?

I haven't even noticed, because I've been taking the bus and light rail all week since we only have one car now. I convinced my firm to invest in the EcoPass (a transit pass that only employers can buy), so now all my public transportation is FREE (along with all my coworkers)! Big deal considering a regional pass is $135/mo (costs the firm $10/mo)


Here's a sweet cheesy TV gas price graphic I found as an illustration...

My Beautiful Car...

...got smashed to bits on Friday evening. Laina was in the car with me, but thank God we are both ok (but stiff and sore). We were driving home from my friend Rachel's house. About 5 mins away from her house I got a flat tire. I pulled into a parking lot and got it changed and called Jay to let him know we were on our way again. Then about 5 mins away from our house, I was crossing an intersection and a Ford F250 turned left in front of me. The light had turned yellow practically as I was crossing it...I didn't even give the color of the light a moment's thought...I was just driving. I saw the truck for a fleeting second before we slammed into him, and I remember thinking "no no no no why are you turning in front of me???" I was going about 40 mph so it was a very sudden stop, airbag deployed and all. Laina was very securely strapped into her car seat and it really did it's job well of protecting her. She was checked out by both the paramedics on the scene and also by the doctor at the ER (where they took us in an ambulance because they wanted to x-ray my neck and chest), and both said she was great. Nothing is wrong with me, either, except whip lash and bruising from the seat belt. I am actually surprised that I wasn't damaged by the airbag, since I've heard bad stories about that. I think it hit my chest if anything at all. So again, we are very thankful that we are ok.

The other driver told the police officer that I ran a red light and that's why he hit me. The good news is that the officer told me that even if it was true that I ran a red light, it would still be the other guy's fault because if you are turning left it is your job to make sure it is clear before you do so. This is where the story gets more interesting..I went to the towing yard today to get my stuff out of the car. I was chatting with the guy at the desk about the accident and he said "did you hit a black F250?" I was a little surprised that he knew that. "Driven by so and so?" Ya, how could he know all this? He then told me that the driver had just picked up his F250 from the repair shop that day of my accident. And why was his truck in the repair shop you may all be wondering??? Because he had just been in ANOTHER accident before mine! Seriously, this guy's license should be revoked! Of course, I don't know if he was at fault in the other one, but it makes sense to me that he was and so now he is really fighting hard to not be at fault for this one. He told my insurance claims adjuster that he is trying to get security camera video footage of the accident to prove I ran a red light. I really hope he does because it will only prove that I didn't. And like the police officer said, it would still be his fault even if I did.

Anyways, I just pray and hope this all gets resolved quickly!

Blossoms of Light...

We celebrated our 6th anniversary yesterday by going out to the Denver Botanical Gardens annual "Blossoms of Light" exhibit... basically a bunch of lights on trees... We'd heard from lots of people that its really cool, so we decided to check it out for ourselves. Its hard for pictures to capture it, because its a whole spread-out multi-acre walking tour, but here's a few



Someone told me beforehand that we had to get the 3D glasses they sell at the entrance that turn all the lights into snowflakes... so we did

And this is what we saw (notice the snowflakes, if you click on the picture the effect should be more obvious):
It was even more pronounced in person, of course. I was surprised it turned out at all through the camera. It was kind of fun driving around afterwards with the glasses on and watching all the city lights turn into snowflakes. Jenna did most of the watching, as I had to drive, so I only put them on at stoplights (which make for impressively gigantic red snowflakes when you're wearing the glasses!).

Then we went to the Sushi Den for dinner, and had some of the best sushi we'd ever had... Jenna couldn't stop raving about the seared tuna. It wasn't really the seared part that made it so good, it was just a really tasty cut of tuna, with a really good sauce. The unagi (eel) and bincho (albacore) were also delicious. I don't think I've ever had a sushi meal where every fish was so consistently fresh and perfect. I wasn't totally sold on Sushi Den the last time we went, but this time I was convinced... although I still want to find a good sushi restaurant a little closer to our neighborhood.

It was pretty cold out (in the teens), which we realized will probably be a staple of our anniversaries from now on, but it was fun to have a wintery night out.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's a promised pic of Laina on her new rocking pony