Thanksgiving, New Car, Piano's

It has been a great couple weeks, but stressful!  Thanksgiving was probably the best part of it all.  We went out to Seaside with my grandparents and had a DELICIOUS feast.   

Happy boy in his Santa suit

We were the lucky ones to spend Thanksgiving with these two :)

What a blast.  It was perfect weather for Thanksgiving.  We even walked down to the coast on the way we saw a herd of Elk.  The food was out of this world.  On our way out the door Grandpa Steck asks to hold the baby.  Mom was hollering to "quick take a picture".  Any excuse to take pictures works great for us!  It was great to have time off and spend it all together.

Our 2004 Toyota Prius

Wow...what an adventure purchasing a vehicle.  We were not quite prepared for what the day would entail.  We started at a Honda dealership...didn't like the cars all that much.  Although we learned from this dealer what to do in the future.  The salesman called us later that day to attempt to get us back in.  The following day he called to tell us he got the boss to lower one of the cars $500....next time we'll not act interested and leave.  Regardless we went to the Toyota dealership.  It was pouring rain.  The guy had trouble knowing prices of cars etc. after much searching this is where we ended.  It seems to be a little fancier than either of us initially expected to end up with, but hopefully it lasts us a long time and has minimal problems.  It's one of those moments with used cars that you wish you had a glass ball.  Then I would maybe feel better about such a huge purchase :)

You may not be able to tell even with the wood pieces taken off the piano above, but the pedals are quite broke.  The metal is sheared off.  The hammers on the piano, about 5 or so are entirely snapped off.  The sound is super bad...that really takes the cake.  It's becoming a practice piano for my dad to work on to maybe fix the nice one below.  Crossing our fingers it works!

The piano Jimmy & I are going to take on isn't it beautiful!

I have to mention a little about this piano.  The guy we got it from has quite the story with it.  He got it at an estate sale.  It came totally black and cheap.  He told us that it was due to being in Europe (I can't remember what country), but to make people who might steal the piano not be interested they painted it black.  This guy took it and stripped the black.  He replaced the top.  He flattened out one of the wood pieces that were warped.  It actually in really good shape.  Our only concern is my dad recently tried to tune it and for the one note he tried it won't tune.  We're hoping it's a one string fluke thing.  Hopefully no restringing is needed.