It's not pottery, but it'll do.

Mark and I celebrated our nine year wedding anniversary on Monday. The traditional gift is pottery, apparently (copper in the UK, according to Wikipedia). We decided to buy a car instead.

It's to replace Noddy, our beloved fourteen year old CR-V, which we realized was costing so much in fuel and repairs that a new (to us) car, even with the outlay, was going to pay for itself in a fairly short time frame. We started out, after research, planning to buy a Prius, which I was super excited about. But then one thing led to another and we ended up buying a Ford S-Max, which is like a small minivan. Considerably different from a Prius, but still twice as fuel efficient as Noddy, and just as practical in terms of space. And gets good reliability ratings. So we got this one now and we'll focus on getting a Prius when it comes time to replace our nine year old Mazda 3.

So here it is! We bought privately from a family about an hour away with a dad/husband who kept the car so immaculate that even though it's six years old (and they have three kids) it looks practically new. And he didn't overprice it, so basically we bought the car from the best kind of person you'd want to buy from. We're getting it checked out on Monday, so we'll see if it's hiding any terrible secrets.

No name just yet - we may just go with Smax. All suggestions welcome.

Daily Ada: Two wheels times two.

Blast from the (recent) past.

Back from Mimi and Pa's visit in May:

Daily Ada: 31 July 13

My Life, My Houmous. By Ada Vallentine

We get things from the daycare in Ada's school bag all the time, mostly letters about fee increases and pictures Ada has painted. But last week there was this - a laminated photo, and no explanation.

I think it looks like the photo she wants on the dust jacket of her first book.

Daily Ada: 20 July 13

Ada is a (mostly) good helper. Though of course dropping the sponge into the bubbly water is way more fun than actually washing the motorcycle.

Daily Ada: 15 July 13

I had to run into work today on my non-working day, so Ada came with me. She was super shy the whole time,  but finally warmed up at the end enough to play with some pebbles in the plant by the front door.