September 2, 2023 - Saturday

It feels like it's been forever since I actually worked on a project that required physical labor, but man, it feels good! Ben and I built shelving for the garage today and, while we weren't able to get it all in place, we were able to nearly complete the building. Pretty good for a day's work! The garage has just been a disaster for so long and even though all the problems can't be solved with good shelving, it will certainly help. I need to figure out a solution for all of the bikes, outside toys/balls, yard tools, and camp chairs. There's lots of stuff on Pinterest to choose from, but I really want to see where we are once we pack the shelves. I might be able to just keep all of the camp chairs on a shelf, if there's space. 

Jonas's friend Gakuto visited today, but since I was outside working all day, I didn't really interact with him much. He packed his own lunch and he and Jonas mostly just hung out upstairs in Jonas's room and in the pool. They seemed to have fun though, so that's good. 

Ben and I went on a date this evening and headed to the Kia dealership for a test drive. We have a big decision to make! Our van is starting to run less well and we know that the time to buy a new car is coming soon. We need to figure out if it's advantageous for us to buy now, while we still have a lot of trade-in value on the van or wait until the van is breaking down and the repairs get to be too much for us to want to deal with anymore. We take very, very long trips in our vehicles and just don't want to be in a position where we're breaking down on the way somewhere. We also don't want to have to stop taking long-distance drive trips because we know we don't have a reliable vehicle. We love the van we test drove today, but Ben is going to meet with the salesman again to talk about interest rates, a better trade-in, etc, to see if we can make it work financially. Our very romantic date ended with a quick dinner at the Rusty Bucket. It was yummy. :)