Monday, December 8, 2014

Ghetto Van and Decorated Tree!

I shouldn't worry that I will run out of ideas to blog about. Just when I think the coffers may be running dry, I have a little adventure! Today it was my car.

We have called AAA twice in the past month (thanks to my mom!) and narrowly avoided a third time today! So, last week I took our van into Honda for some recall work. Gotta love repairs that cost $0!! We all know how often that happens. While I had the van in, I asked them to check out our sliding door on the driver's side, which has been getting harder to use. It squeaks and grates and gets stuck a little bit sometimes. Their verdict? It needs a new center roller bearing (or something like that) and the other door will need one soon and it will cost $218.50 per door.

I said, "No, thanks!" To that, and the other bazillion repairs they came up with totaling over $2000 (seriously) and we have been checking into which repairs we absolutely need to do safety-wise (because yes, we are not stupid enough to get them done at a dealer!) and trying to figure out how to fund them. We figured we could move the door repair towards the bottom of the list.

Until today. When I got loaded up a couple bags of groceries, Eliana and then could NOT get the door to close! I tried with all my might (which, okay, okay, maybe isn't too mighty) to get the darn door to close, to no avail! Then some older man came along, who spoke little English, and he kept trying to find a button to push while I kept trying to explain that we don't have power doors! He pushed and pulled with all of his might, too, with no results.

So, once again, my dearest Mama came to my rescue (she will start to dread my phone calls pretty soon if this keeps up!) We wanted to avoid towing costs so my mom came to pick up Eliana and follow me to the dealer. I had to drive 20 minutes with the door wide open! As the lady at the dealer put it so eloquently, "You might look a little ghetto but....."


Yeah, that's me! I just didn't make eye contact with anyone and turned up the heat for the drive! I went to pull into the service garage door and this guy was like, "Um, your door is open..." ha! Long story short, they helped me close the door and I opted out of them fixing it then because they tried to up the price to almost $400 per door!! Yeah freaking right! I told the guy what they quoted me only last week and he said if they wrote it down then they have to honor it. He looked very sad about that:)

So, we are all banned from using that sliding door until we figure out how to fix it. Hopefully soon! Our poor van that we have loved so much is falling to pieces!


But to end the day on a happier note, we finally decorated our little tree tonight! The kiddos waited anxiously all day! They had so much fun pulling ornaments out and remembered ones they've made at school or were given as gifts.


Our cute little tree:) The guy at the tree lot lopped off way too many branches at the bottom so we did our best to pull the branches down with heavy ornaments and use the tree skirt to cover it up. As Ben said, it kind of looks like a man who got his hair cut a little too short in the back....haha.

We followed up our decorating with our Advent devotions for the night. It's been really cool to do it together. We read the scriptures, talk about what the story means and how it relates to Jesus' birth and then take turns cutting out and hanging up the ornaments. We are really loving this new tradition!

Happy Christmas;)

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