Cinderella's Dress

On Wednesday morning, Miss R cried a lot when I dropped her off at school. Henry marched happily into his classroom. Grammy and Aunt Carolyn picked them up at school in the afternoon. They went with them and Poppy to Costco and had a fabulous time as always snacking their way around the building. This time, it was the veggie shushi that caught their fancy.

When they went to Grammy and Poppy's house, they watched Cinderella for the first time (to my knowledge) with Aunt Carolyn. They were familiar with the story from their books. The most shocking part for Miss R was when the evil stepsisters ripped Cinderella's dress. Carolyn said that she looked genuinely shocked that someone would deliberately destroy a lovely outfit. Henry was outraged too. Why would they do that?

Meanwhile, Jeff and I went car shopping. Jeff had started off excited but his dreams have been dashed by the realization that the car he wants isn't going to suit our currently lifestyle. We tried out the Camry. It's nice, but it isn't going to fit three kids. And we are thinking of fostering again if we are needed. We also looked at the Prius, but if we were to get a Hybrid, I'd lean toward the Camry b/c I think that it has a little more room. We then looked mini-vans. First up, the Siena. We visited the Honda dealership to look at Odysseys. We found one that we liked, but didn't test drive it. The salesperson didn't seem excited to try to make a deal with us. We visited Mazda to try the Mazda 5. Jeff drove it. The salesperson didn't say anything about it, which was weird.

And finally, we ended up at Chrysler to check out the Town & Country. The salewoman was better at "selling" the vehicle, but we felt like we were being sized up to see how much they could squeeze out of us. After much waiting, she came back with some BS about we could sign the papers for an exorbitant price. I said, "That's not what we are looking to pay." I hadn't checked out prices for that model online, but it seemed high. I said it was $4K out of the ballpark. So then she hems and haws (maybe they have a "lower" model...blah blah blah). After waiting a long time, she comes back with the "lower" model, but maybe they could work something out. She gives that look of "well, we don't normally do this"...which is crap of course. The whole car sale tango is such a colossal waste of time. She must have said something about getting the deal done tonight three times. How many times did we have to say that we weren't signing ANYTHING last night?

On Thursday morning, Jeff used my mom's Costco account and through their program, he could get the same vehicle for $7-8K less than they were peddling last night. We won't be going back to that dealership obviously.

We had a visit from Miss R's new caseworker from St. Nicholas (the adoption agency). CPS transfers cases to them once severance has happened. We're not certified for adoption yet (wish we had been given the paperwork a long time ago so that it could done already). The caseworker was Christy. She didn't have a lot of questions. She checked out R's room. She gave us papers to fill out. I'm going to start on them now. Yea. More paperwork. The kids played nicely during her visit.

Henry has eaten well today, but when he says he's all done, I know that I can coax more food into him.

The kids are napping. Jeff is looking out more cars/minivans. I hope that he finds something that he likes. If only the Honda Odysessy was a hybrid....