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Toyota’s Prius, Camry and Venza, OH MY!

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When my mind isn’t preoccupied with water-woes, wondering when our electricity will come back and and oh I don’t know,  my busy almost 4 year old, my mind wanders to the same thing every time.

Cars.

Seriously, ever since I’ve started my partnership with Toyota and especially since I flew down to Toyota Headquarters and test drove some cars at the beginning of this month, I can’t stop thinking about them.

I may have a problem.

It may require an intervention…Or a new car.

When I was in Torrance, CA at ToyotaUSA headquarters I drove the Prius V, the newly redesigned Camry SE and, my favorite, the Venza. I also spent quite a bit of time checking out the Hybrid Highlander and the Sequoia.

I know I touched on the driving in my last post about my trip, I really wanted to tell you more about them…

Toyota Prius C

The PriusV {as in, the letter V, not five, like I thought} is one of the new members of the Prius family. The “V” literally stands for versatility. And I can see where they got that name. Out of all of the members of the Prius family, this one is definitely the most versatile & family friendly. It’s the biggest of the bunch, but still gets good gas mileage (40-44 mpg). There’s plenty of room for big car seats in the back seat and a decent amount of cargo space.

All that being said? I don’t think it’d be the winner for our family. For one, apparently I’m a total lead foot and based on the drive I took it on? I was only getting gas milage in the mid-30s. It’d take some definite adjustment in my driving to get used to driving the Prius…or any Hybrid for that matter. Have you ever driven one? It totally weirded me out how it switched from electric to gas and back again. The other main thing is that our dog wouldn’t be able to really fit in the back very comfortably on any extended family outings.

On a side note, the Prius C and the Prius Plug have both been launched this month! The Prius Plug is Toyota’s answer to the electric car…and it’s a pretty nice answer, if you ask me! I totally would have taken this for a spin if there was one when I was driving the cars. The Prius C is a cute compact version of the Prius starting UNDER $20,000 and getting up to over 5o mpg!

See how cute it is? The car, people…not the crazy bloggers…look past the crazy bloggers!

Toyota Prius C

Anyway, moving on…

The Camry SE was pretty sweet. The SE is their sport model so it was all sorts of fancy. Way fancier than we would have in a car, but way fun to drive. It had the option of on the steering wheel shifting for those smart and coordinated enough to do that {ie: NOT me}. I love that over 90% of Camrys {Camrees? Camries? Cam-rys?} are built from raw material to finished product right in the US! The new Camry also has Toyota’s new entune system that syncs your smartphone to the car so you can listen to your Pandora and lots of other fancy stuff like a gas station & restaurant locator. And everyone knows a Camry pretty much runs FOREVER! Obviously, it wouldn’t be very 65-lb Husky-Wolf friendly, but we do have 2 other vehicles that we could take if we needed to load up the entire family. All in all, a great car that will definitely be on our list to look at further when the time comes to buy a new car.

But my favorite, FAVORITE car out of all of them was the Venza! I remember when the Vena first came out, Andy mentioned liking the body style. To be honest, I was shocked that he said that. So, knowing that Andy liked it based on looks alone it was on my list to drive. I freaking LOVED it! Everything about it. It drove nice. It had great power. It wasn’t a “car”.

Toyota Venza Steering Wheel

It had fantastic cargo space, enough for the dog! And the room in the back seat? Seriously amazed me. No joke…I adjusted the front driver’s seat to my preferences (I have long legs) then got in back…there was MORE room in the back than I needed in the front. Serious bonus points when it comes to accommodating bulky car seats and eventually kids with long legs like their parents!

Toyota Venza Back Seat

Hard to tell, but SO! MUCH! SPACE!

I can’t wait to get Andy out to our local Toyota Dealership to take it out for a spin. I know he’d love it as much as I do.

The only draw back I found for our family is the price. Out of all the vehicles we’d likely be considering for our new car, it’s the most expensive. But considering we keep our vehicles for long periods of time, it’d probably be worth it. Now to just get that money tree growing on the back of the property…

If I had to to it all over again, I would have driven more of the cars because seriously? SO MUCH FUN!

There’s actually a Ride & Drive event this weekend in the Portland, OR area! If you’re free on Sunday you should go check it out and see for yourself. Rumor has it the new Prius Plug will be there!

Disclosure: I was selected for participation in the TWIN community through a program with Clever Girls Collective. I did not receive any compensation for writing this post, or payment in exchange for participating. The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not reflect the views of the Toyota.

Either God hates me or He’s got a sick sense of humor

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It’s been quiet around these parts lately…and it’s definitely NOT for lack of excitement.

I swear it’s been just one.thing.after.another.

I wrote a little bit about our water drama here…ok, I was mostly complaining, but…well, whatever. Andy and our plumber-friend were up until 2:30 AM getting the water going. Yes, TWO-THIRTY in the morning. They are nuts. See also: amazing.

Long story short, it wasn’t all the way fixed, but it was functioning. Then later in the day Sunday, after 2 loads of laundry and washing all of the pots and pans something else went wrong and we lost water AGAIN. This time, Andy was able to fix it on Monday evening after work. YESSS!!! So between Monday night & Tuesday after work I did 4 loads of laundry and ran two loads of dishes. I was pretty much doing a happy dance.

Then Wednesday morning, my alarm went off at the usual 5:20 AM. I got up, showered and was headed to the other end of the house to dig some {finally} clean clothes out of the laundry baskets when we lost power.

Now, keep in mind we had just had fully functioning water for a little over 24 hours. And in the country, no power means no water.  {are you freaking kidding me!?}

An unexpected freak snow storm did some major damage to our area’s power supply. According to our power company’s website we should have power restored sometime late this afternoon.

Rylee was all sorts of excited to look out the window and find 8 inches of snow with more coming down!

We spent all day yesterday hunkered down in our house never straying too far from our wood stove, as a family. And you know what? It was so amazing. We played games. We talked. We laughed. With all the water drama happening, we’d hardly spent any time as a family over the last couple of weeks, so this was a much needed surprise.

Sleeping on the floor next to the fire at 22 weeks pregnant was a little less than amazing, but I was thankful for our wood stove so I’m not complaining.

Who knows what this means for the contents of our fridge. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a major restocking of condiments this weekend.

This morning I headed into town to my mom’s house to shower and get ready for work. And apparently in my haste to pack a back {and I use haste loosely, I was in no hurry at all}, I forgot to pack a bra. So yea…thank God for my obsession with camis that have built in bra’s because this could have been way more awkward. {just keeping it real, folks}

Andy and our plumber-friend will be back in the pump house on Saturday finishing everything up, after which I’m highly contemplating throwing a “COME TASTE OUR AWESOME WATER” party.

I’m assuming we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging from here on out, but with our luck? I wouldn’t make any bets.

Happy Thursday.

{seriously, how is it Thursday!?}

H2-Oh Eff {AKA-The Rice Curse}

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So it’s Saturday afternoon and instead of washing dishes or folding laundry like I typically do during nap time {stop laughing, it’s the truth}, I’m sitting on my butt. This time not really by choice. I have no water again still.

We’ve been having some major water drama over here for the last 9 days or so. When our plumber-friend came over that first night and “fixed” the problem within an hour, I couldn’t help but think that was too god to be true. And well, I was right. Then after coming back over and working on the system all day last Saturday, turns out we need a whole new filter system for our pump house/well. Ok, not the end of the world, right? We were able to bypass the broken filter system so our house and the rental could have water for showering, flushing the toilet, etc through the week. I figured I’d wait to do laundry because our water straight out of the ground has a really high iron content and I didn’t want it to discolor our clothes. We also figured we’d just use as little water as possible so the high-iron water didn’t damage our water heater.

Well, as Andy and our plumber-friend were working out a plan for our new filter system we found out a few things we hadn’t known previously about the state of our water. After some water testing, we found out that not only does our water have an extremely high iron content, it also has a funky ph level and traces of bacteria. All of which are certainly not the end of the world individually, but combined it meant that we couldn’t just get one type of filter system or the other, we have to get both. Nearly doubling our cost. Kind of a tough one to swallow, but for the best, so ok, fine, whatever.

Our plumber-friend was able to order up our new system to have it ready to install today {thank GOD!}. So yesterday, while Andy was home he decided to prep the pump house for the new system. While moving something around or something {I’m fuzzy on the details here} a pipe was broken causing a leak in the pipeline to the rental. Andy had to completely shut off their water…they were less than pleased, obviously. Andy told them when they were ready to shower to call him and he’d go down to the pump house to turn their water back on, but it meant that they couldn’t do any laundry.

Ry & I went grocery shopping this morning, stopping for Subway on the way home to feed the guys {I’m kind of over cooking in my kitchen right now}. When I brought lunch home, I find out that, of course, things are not going as they should and we might not have water turned back on until sometime tomorrow. Something about having to trench something and blah-blah-blah.

I swear Andy is cursed. I call it the Rice curse, because his dad kind of has it too. Basically, whatever they’re working on, whatever the project might be, no matter how long it is “supposed to” take, something will go wrong and said project will take at least 3 times longer than it should to complete. It doesn’t matter if the project is something as simple as changing the oil in the car. What should take about 20 minutes, will ALWAYS take 45-60. Working on something on the farm truck? What should be bolted on with a standard bolt isn’t standard at all and in fact requires some special tool that will cost a shit-ton of money and take a bunch of extra time. Nothing ever goes right for him.

Look, I know it sounds like I’m complaining here, and well, I kind of am. I realize it’s probably way more frustrating for him than for me so I really try to stay positive in any situation, but…well, sometimes it’s really hard. It seems like it’s just been one thing after another with this water-drama and it’s wearing on me.

I always try and find the “silver lining” but I’m having trouble this time.

I feel like my house is in complete disarray. There is laundry piling up beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I am wearing the same pair of pants for the umpteenth time since the last time they were washed.

And my kitchen? Oh even thinking about my kitchen has me totally overwhelmed. I’m thankful Andy’ grandparents bought us a 12 piece setting of flatware, but at this point we’re down to 2 clean knives and 3 clean forks. I think I have 1 pan and 1 pot that are still clean and usable. We’ve been using paper plates to lessen the load of dirty dishes, but that only helps so much…

I am thankful that all the dishes have at least been rinsed so my house isn’t smelly on top of everything else.

It’s going to take a while to get all caught up on laundry and dishes…especially if we don’t have water until tomorrow sometime.

I really wish I could have a bottle glass of wine.

Once this new system is in, it better be the best damn water I’ve ever tasted.

Oh that second child complex…

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I can feel it coming on already, and this baby is still in the oven.

I find myself focusing so much on Rylee not feeling “left out” that I’m almost kind of…meh…about this little girl I’m growing inside me. Don’t get me wrong, I am already so in love with this girl tap-dancing on my intestines and I’m excited to hold a fresh baked baby in my arms in just a few months but when it comes to things like…baby bedding…nursery decorating…and oh I don’t know…HER NAME, I find myself getting totally overwhelmed and resorting to that tried & true “ignore” tactic in order to cope. I mean, we’ve got 4 more months to figure this stuff out, right?

RIGHT!?

Maybe once Ry’s room is all set up and moved at the end of this month I can will start focusing on the nursery. But, then again, that’s what I said to myself about choosing a name once we knew if the baby was a boy or a girl and that’s clearly worked out so far…

Ha.

Hahahah.

{I may or may not have just wet my pants a little bit from laughing so hard.}

Seriously though…this little girl growing inside of me is very much her own person. She’s already proven this to me by the sheer difference in my 2 pregnancies. Sure there will be hand-me-downs and I’m more than stoked we aren’t going to have to buy all new clothes and car seats and jumperoos and such, but this girl is like no one else. She deserves her own stuff, a space of her own.

She’s not just going to be “Rylee’s little sister” she’s going to be…well, we’re still working on that but we have at least decided that her name won’t be Rylee, just spelled Riley.

So we’re at least making progress.

Wordless{ish} Wednesday: Weekend Review

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Since it’s already Wednesday, I figured it was a little too late to do a full on weekend recap, so here it is via photo highlights…

Our weekend started out with a Starbucks & Doughnut date in the grocery store…

Then that afternoon someone couch napped for THREE hours while I worked on my laptop for a bit {then snuck in a two hour nap myself}…

Sunday I started that craft I saw on Pinterest for decoration in Ry’s new big girl room. And they actually turned out pretty well…now I just need to decide if I’m going to put them in a glass bowl up on a shelf or hang them from the ceiling. Thoughts?


And, we’re still having water issues, but we have water pressure and we can shower so it’s not all bad. Turns out we’re getting a whole new filter system! Yeow! Vacations? Who needs ’em!? We’ve got a fancy new filter system! Our life is seriously so glamorous. The fact that it costs a boat load of moola hurts a little less when I remember that we’re getting an awesome deal because we “have people” and because the new system means we won’t have to use water softener salt pellets anymore so it’ll pay for itself in just a couple of years! And bonus…it’s a tax write-off because it’s for the rental too!

Oh, and there’s the fact that I’m enjoying THIS this morning…

It’s a little known fact that cookies & coffee help make everything better.

Happy Wednesday!

Oh and P.S. if you have an iphone and you’re not on instagram, GET ON IT! (and follow me while you’re at it because you’re clearly missing out on all the awesome photos I post on there.)

Linking up with BabyBabyLemon, Parenting By Dummies, The Paper Mama and Jenni from the Blog.