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;)

Christmas Trees and Buckeyes!

I totally dropped the ball blogging yesterday! Oops:) I'm still pretty happy with 6/7 days! My excuse is that it was a busy day and the Buckeyes were playing a really big game last night. I fell asleep probably 10 minutes before the end, too:)

Ben worked a lot this weekend so he was really tired. We hung around in the morning yesterday and then before he had to go to work again, we ran out and got a little Christmas tree! My mom and stepdad get a real tree every year and asked if we wanted to meet them nearby to pick one out.

We haven't had a real tree since 2004! I clearly remember Ben dragging it down the apartment steps after Christmas, leaving a long trail of dead pine needles....:) Since then we have put up our teeny 3 ft high Christmas (fake!) tree most years and for a few years we had an old cast off from my Grandma. It leaned a little and the lights flickered occasionally but it was still pretty until we had to lay it to rest a couple years ago.

This year, we weren't even going to get a tree, as we have a super small living room but we decided to get a little one just because we can! And there is something SO beautiful about a real tree.

Love my mom and stepdad!

Cheese! It was FREEZING outside so it was pretty much the shortest Christmas-tree-picking-outing ever. But still fun:)

Short but cute! We still haven't put any lights or anything on it because Ben had to run off to work after he put it up and then we have been gone all day today. Hopefully tomorrow!

We have a pretty wreath to help cover up our ugly orange door! Orange is definitely not my favorite color but there's nothing to do about it except make it look at pretty as possible:)

Our cuties last week at the family Buckeye party! They got their Buckeye shirts from their Grandma and they wear them faithfully every Saturday:) They will hardly know what to do with themselves with football season coming to a close!

Now off to get ready for the new week ahead. Hope you had a great weekend!

Snow and Christmas!

 This weekend we went shopping to fill some boxes for Operation Christmas Child. We let the kiddos choose whether they wanted to do a boy or girl and they wanted to do both! We said a prayer over the Boy and the Girl before we went in. Last time we did this, Eliana was a babe and the boys were 4 and 6. It was hard for them, especially Z, to not have their eyes on all the toys and want them for themselves. We talked about it a lot and it was such a good learning lesson for them.

This year there was no complaining or "me, me me's" at all, thankfully! They really got into it and really wanted to make the boxes special:) I went to wrap them yesterday morning after we packed them up (and oh, you should've seen Eliana helping to pack it all up! So cute!) and realized that all of my wrapping paper had been ruined in the flooding back in May. I forgot all about it! We sheepishly dropped off the wrapping-less boxes but were told it was no problem and they could wrap them for us.

If I could tell anyone anything about doing something like this, I would say: Give freely and with your whole heart. People who don't have much and are in need don't deserve less than you. They are not lesser human beings. When I was growing up and we went through our tough period after my dad left, we were struggling and didn't have much food or any Christmas gifts and sometimes we would get food from the church pantry or gifts dropped off from the church. I will never forget opening a can of cornmeal and finding worms in it. Or the box of pistachio pudding (who eats that anyways??) that had been expired for over 3 years. Or the Christmas gifts that were nowhere near new and were falling apart or were cheaply made. It hurts when you are in that situation to even ask for help but it hurts more when you receive it and you realize that people think you are only good enough for their cast-offs....God asks us to treat others with Love and to consider them better than ourselves.

What better season to treat others this way!!

We found a couple packs of gel window cling-ons for the kiddos to have a little fun with! They each chose one and got their "own window" to decorate:)

Cheese! Eliana chose Santa and his reindeer and she definitely needed help because there were a few teeny tiny pieces. She loved it, though!

Samuel chose the snowman and Christmas tree. Getting a non-cheesy smile out of him is work, I tell you!

Haha, he has a great sense of humor!

Zakkai chose the snowflakes!

We got snow this weekend and Eliana was very excited to get outside and do some shoveling after we dropped the boys off at school. As soon as we got back, I got her all bundled up and out we went! We spent an hour outside shoveling. First I just took pictures of her cute self but then I picked up our shovel and got to work on the sidewalks. I do love shoveling!

Man, oh, man, this girl had fun!!! She did NOT want to go inside!

So happy!

Pretty snow!

Cheese! I kept saying, "Are you ready to go inside and get warm?" And she would say, "No!!" One of us was a little more productive with our shoveling but I won't make you guess who:) I think I will let her out a little whenever there is snow so I can wear her out!!

Here is a little pic of our Charlie Brown tree;) We tossed up the idea of getting a real tree because I miss it so but there isn't much time between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year and with traveling for both, we wouldn't get enough time to enjoy our tree. I really hope we can get one next year!

Stay warm tonight!