My New Car And The Park!

I am still LOVING my new car!!
Here is a brief story on how we came about getting it: My little Jetta I have had for almost 5 years. It was a good little car while I was in college (Wow, even though I've been out of college for almost 5 years...holy cow. Guess it wasn't much of a college car!) but it was nice before we had a baby! In the last few months it's been having major problems. Actually, it's always had major problems, but they have escalated. It had over 110,000 miles on it and was needing repairs every month! We HAD to get out of it. I hated driving it because I knew it was a matter of time before it broke down and left me and Paiton stranded somewhere. Matt and I have been looking somewhat, mostly trying to figure out what we'd like to get next. We knew it needed to be bigger and have leather seats. Those were both MUSTS. Our dogs go to Nana and Papa's with us and they shed like crazy year round. Cleaning dog hair out of cloth seats all the time is a nightmare.
I liked the Dodge Journey and the Dodge Nitro. Matt was kind of iffy about both of those, he didn't trust them to last long. He introduced me to the Mazda 5. It's technically a van I guess, but they don't call it a van. It's not shaped like a van but like a low SUV. Which is great. I love driving my parents Durango, and tall cars, but I am so short that getting Paiton into her car seat in those is quite the event and I really didn't want to deal with that daily. The 5 is short, about as tall as me, and I can easily get P into her seat. I went and test drove one and fell in love. I had my lists of "wants" - seat heaters, a moon roof, dvd player, etc. The only "must" we had was leather. We went back and forth between two 5's, one was fully loaded with all my wants and the other was more practical and more affordable, BUT it didn't have leather. The dealer really wanted to sell us that but we just knew we weren't going to settle for something that didn't have what we deemed necessary. When the dealer saw that, he made an offer we couldn't refuse: he'd knock $2500 off the car and have them reupholster the seats to leather. We had a deal!
He even went and announced "We'd like to congratulate Matt and Ashley Locke on their purchase of a brand new Mazda 5!" on a bullhorn! It was neat!
So we are the proud owners of a brand new car!!
Here are some pictures of the things I love about it:
It has cup holders! Not a big deal to most, but I didn't have cup holders in the Jetta so this excites me!!
The fact that it only had 30 something miles on it when we bought it!
AND...it's an automatic!! The Jetta was a stick and I used to love it but I was so tired of it!!
Paiton loves it too! She says "Weee!" while we ride in it!

So, that's my new car in a nutshell. And we love love love it!! It is such a MOM car! At first it kind of bothered me to think of buying a "van" but then I realized - mom's are smart!! Vans are so much easier to get in and out of, especially since it's usually just me and P!! It has tons of room and it drives really nicely!!! LOVE IT!!
Ok, onto other things I love - my kid!
Yesterday we met our best friends, Kim and Cohen at the park. Paiton kept saying "Hi Coco!"
The weather has been perfect yesterday and today. It got up to 71 yesterday and to be honest, Kim and I were roasting at the park! We were SO hot!! Today I wore a tanktop because it's supposed to be in the 70's again and I wanted to be prepared!


And yes, that's my child insisting on wearing her sunglasses. She has more pairs than I do!! She is so hilarious with her girliness!!
Last night we had spaghetti for dinner, yummy!