Life has become really hectic. It's getting harder and harder to get even the basics done. And normal life never seems to happen because there's always something or other to disrupt my plans.
Ann Marie is pulling herself up on things to stand now (as of a few of weeks ago) and will kind of walk if you hold her hands. Army crawling is still her primary way of getting around, but she is transitioning into a regular crawl. I don't think many of her onesies are going to last for another child because she loves exploring the kitchen and inevitably gets stuff all over her front. And the sand park is an even worse culprit. She signs more and food and says more (Mah! Mah!), Dad (dada), and Mom (nanana or mamama). She is starting to figure out how to drink out of a sippy cup. Lately I feel like I can't make food fast enough for her to eat it. The other day I made sweet potato fries and I'm pretty sure she ate an entire sweet potato by herself.
Heidi can't keep her hands off of Ann Marie. Every time I turn around I see her carrying her by the armpits somewhere. I think being a big sister will be more fun once Ann Marie is walking and knows how to play and talk better.
Kevin has been doing a lot better with his reading lately. Sounding out words is not as much of a battle (still hard, but not as bad), and he's learned a lot of sight words, so that helps him to be able to read faster. It sounds like at school they are starting to learn more phonetics. He told me about how super E at the end of words can jump on the vowel in the middle and make it say its name, and he's been learning about some word families like the ones that end in -ay and words that have ee in them. He's been using a website called Raz Kids at school sometimes, and even though we have access to it at home I hadn't really had him do it at home much because I was getting things from the library for him to read. But a few weeks ago we got on there with him and realized he was way behind, and when we looked at the parents page we realized it was because he didn't understand how to take the quizzes and he was repeating the same five books over and over. So Ryan sat down with him one evening and helped Kevin understand it better and got him motivated to try to aim to get from Level B to Level C. In just a couple of days he read forty books and did all the quizzes and had moved on to Level C. He was pretty excited. So now he's working on getting to Level D. The books are even more dumb than the ones he's been bringing home from school, which I didn't realize was possible, but he's motivated by the levels and it does give him some practice with sight words and learning new words. Plus I was just a little embarrassed when I realized how behind he was.
Last week Kevin didn't miss the bus once in the morning. This is a huge accomplishment because we had a couple of months where I don't think he caught the bus once. I finally decided to stop fighting the daily half-hour battle of having him get himself dressed because it's much, much more convenient for me to dress him myself so he can catch the bus. If he misses the bus I end up spending twenty minutes in rush hour traffic both ways getting him to school.
Ryan is really close to having his first paper ready for publication. He keeps having things that need to be edited and tweaked, but he's close. He's also been working a little on his second paper.
A little over a week ago I bought groceries while Heidi was at joy school. I brought them home and was putting them away as quickly as I could so I could go pick up Heidi, when I realized that one of my jugs of milk had a hole in it. It made a puddle on the counter that I had to clean up, then I realized the stroller (which I had used to bring in all the groceries) was sopping wet, and then with a terrible sinking feeling I realized that meant there was probably a puddle of milk in the back of our van. My fears were confirmed when I went out to check. I had to call the mom who was hosting joy school to let her know I was going to be late because of the milk, but since she had to leave right away to go teach a class at a gym, she had to ask one of the other moms to stay with Heidi until I could get there. So I was grateful that I could take some time to try to clean up the milk. The floor of the van wasn't quite as bad as I had feared, but it was wet on one side, so I dried it as well as I could and then scrubbed at it with wet washcloths, then went and picked up Heidi.
The next day the van definitely smelled like milk. It didn't smell like sour milk yet, but it smelled like milk. So I did a more vigorous scrub with Simple Green and water and got more worried. The next day we came out to go to church and the van smelled like rotting milk and I started freaking out that our car was going to be ruined. I didn't feel like scrubbing it myself was doing any good and I just wanted it taken care of. So finally I decided that the best thing would be to get it shampooed. That evening I did a lot of research about various car wash businesses, and I realized that it probably wouldn't cost as much as I had been thinking, so the next morning (Monday) I called and made an appointment. As soon as the worker opened the trunk and got a whiff, he said, "Oh, milk. I've dealt with this before." He shampooed the carpet pretty thoroughly and sprayed it with the same stuff they use to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke. Then I spent as much time outside with the kids as possible so I could open the back of the van and keep an eye on it while it dried. Fortunately Tuesday was a warm sunny day, so it dried pretty quickly once the sun was shining on it. Now our car still smells like the stuff that was sprayed on the carpet, so we're getting a little tired of that smell, but so far the smell of rotten milk hasn't returned, even after a week, so I'm feeling hopeful that the problem is taken care of. I guess in the future I will make sure the milk isn't sitting right on top of the carpet in case something like this happens again. We are very grateful that the milk smell seems to be gone. One of my friends commented that whoever said "Never cry over spilled milk" was a fool.
I took Heidi to the NCSU Farm Animal Days again this year. I forgot to take the camera, but she had a good time. She still talks about holding the baby chicks from last year, so I knew she would really like to go again. She enjoyed looking at all the animals and trying a few of the tractors, and considering how long we had to wait in line to see the chicks she was pretty patient. I was a little annoyed because as we were getting close to the front of the line, three moms with about eight kids jumped in front of us in line. Apparently one of them had been saving a spot for everyone else so they wouldn't have to wait a long time with all their kids. On the one hand, it made sense, but it was still irritating to have that big group jump in front of us after we had waited so long. I decided not to say anything. Heidi was happy to finally get to hold a chick. When we had seen everything they gave us some free ice cream. Kevin was disappointed that he didn't get to come, but it only lasted until 2:00 every day and I didn't want to take him out of school since he's already missed eight days this year. Maybe next year I'll check him out of school so he can go.
We are trying to establish Saturday chores for the kids. We talked about it in family home evening and told how helping to clean up is part of being a family, so yesterday they asked if we were going to have a chore chart. We had them clean toilets and mirrors with a lot of guidance from me. We are also trying to be more strict about having them pick up the toys themselves and put their own clothes away. Most of the time it seems like a lot more work to get them to clean up after themselves, but I'm trying to remind myself that this is an investment in the future.
Every once in a while I feel like I'm close to being caught up on laundry. When that happens it usually means it's time to start washing all the clothes again. When Kevin was a baby I didn't understand why putting away clothes that are too small or out of season was such an ordeal for other moms, but now I get it. When you have several kids and a dozen bins full of clothes to save, it's a lot more work. I also realized that there were several cute girl outfits I had saved from when Heidi was a baby that are already close to being too small for Ann Marie. Whoops.
Showing posts with label van. Show all posts
Showing posts with label van. Show all posts
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Saturday, March 16, 2013
new van
This is a long post. Skim if you want. There are some pictures at the very end of our new van.
On Thursday, February 28th, the kids and I were in our first car crash. We had gone to Jared and Kristi's house to play with Kristi and Lily and Zach, and I was bringing the kids home for naps and so I could go to class. I was driving in the right lane on a main road when a girl didn't see us and pulled out of a Wendy's parking lot. I had a couple of seconds to react, but I knew before it happened that I wouldn't be able to slow down enough to avoid colliding. I did have a calm feeling that we would be okay. The right front corner of our car hit the left front corner of her car and our car was pushed about halfway into the left lane. Fortunately it wasn't a very violent collision and nobody was injured. None of us even had any whiplash afterwards.
The girl got out and I rolled my window down. There were a lot of cars trying to go around our car, so I didn't get out right away. She said that it looked like the body of the car was hanging down on the tire and she didn't think it would be a good idea to drive it, so I just turned on the emergency lights. When I had a chance I got out and looked at the damage and agreed that it might not be a good idea to try to drive the car and move it out of the way. There was a stiff piece of the body that was touching the tire and I thought it would pop the tire if I drove. The other girl called the police, and an officer arrived in a few minutes. He thought it would be okay if I drove the car enough to get into a side street, so I did that and it was okay, but now the body was definitely digging into the tire and I knew we would not be driving home.
The interesting thing was that Ryan and I had received inspiration in various ways in the month before the accident that prepared me for this experience. We acted on some of it but unfortunately not on all of it. I had been feeling like I should make a list of important phone numbers so that if we got in an accident or the car broke down somewhere I would be able to call Jared and Kristi or a friend from the ward and also call roadside assistance. I had also been feeling like I should put some minutes on our cell phone and stick it in the car. (We don't carry around cell phones, but we have a very basic pay-as-you-go cell phone, and since we hardly ever use it we hadn't bothered to put more minutes on it for a while.) Unfortunately I never got around to doing either of those things. I ended up borrowing the other driver's cell phone to try to call Ryan, who wasn't home yet, and I didn't know any other phone numbers for people I could call.
A few weeks before the accident, Ryan said we should have a family home evening to talk about what to do if we had a car accident or the car broke down somewhere. He showed me what's covered on the insurance policy and told me about what the process is for filing a claim, and told me about what information to get from the other driver. So I at least knew what to do for that. Roadside assistance was one of the numbers I had been planning to put on my list for the car. While I was getting things out of the glove compartment I noticed there was a form in there with some contact information for USAA (where we get our auto insurance). I decided to call them and see if they could get me a tow truck (all of this was on the other driver's phone, and I was kicking myself for not putting our cell phone in the car). USAA was so helpful and got a tow truck for me and then the person on the phone did a conference call with Ryan (who was fortunately home at that point) so I could tell him what had happened. Ryan gave us Jared and Kristi's number and then the associate did a conference call with them so I could ask them to give us a ride home. So yay for Ryan for listening to the Holy Ghost.
The kids didn't cry after the accident, but after I had moved the car I guess for Kevin it finally sunk in that something slightly scary had happened, and he started to cry. I got him out of his seat to comfort him and it took a while for him to calm down. It was kind of cold outside, but he refused to get back in the car because he was scared. Heidi went to sleep. There was a little Asian grandma going into Wendy's who tried to convince me in broken English that I needed to put Kevin back in the car because it was cold, but since I was talking on the phone and talking to the police officer I couldn't really explain to her that he was scared to get back in the car after what had happened. She gave up on me and went inside, but I did notice she kept looking out the window at us with a very concerned look on her face.
After Kevin had calmed down he looked at the car and was so interested in the fact that it was broken. He kept going over to the other driver and telling her our car was broken. Then he saw her car and said, "Oh! Your car is broken too! Oh, dear, your car is broken." I felt sort of bad because she already felt bad about causing the accident and Kevin was rubbing it in, but oh well.
We had to take everything out of the car before the tow truck took the car away. Oh, and by the way, I had also been thinking I should probably clean out the car. There were lots of little slips of paper with addresses and directions on them, several water bottle lids, and a lot of other things. Fortunately, the last time Ryan drove the car he had taken out the garbage and recycling and had saved the garbage bags from the recycling, so I just stuffed everything haphazardly in the garbage bags. The tow truck driver helped. Then he towed our car away. It was the last time we would ever see our Honda Accord.
The insurance company said it was likely that our car would not be worth repairing because of its age, so we started looking at cars. We found out the next Tuesday that they decided the car was a total loss and they would be giving us a check towards buying a new car. We wanted to be able to get a car that was at least as good as the one we lost, but based on the value of the car on our tax return we wouldn't get enough money to do that. Used cars are more expensive right now. We found cars that were basically the same mileage and year as our car that were selling for only $200 less than what we paid for ours five years ago. Fortunately, they are giving us more money than we expected, so it worked out. I still think it's a shame that the car was totaled because it was a great car and would have lasted many more years, but maybe somebody will buy it and think it's worth fixing.
Then we had to decide whether we should get another sedan or upgrade to more space. Eventually we want to have more kids, and it's hard to fit more than two kids in full car seats in the back seat of a sedan. Before the accident we were planning to try to fit three in the car and maybe buy skinnier car seats. But since we had to buy a new car now anyway, it seemed like maybe it was time to get a minivan. After thinking about it a lot it seemed like getting a minivan was the right choice for us. We did a lot of our shopping online using Cars.com, which was really helpful for getting an idea of what prices you would get for certain mileages, models, and ages.
We found a place called Westgate Auto Imports that had a few reasonably priced vans in our price range, so we decided to check them out. It was a great experience. We showed up and they gave us a list of the cars in the lot with their information, including prices, and told us we were free to go look at the cars and the cars should all be unlocked. So we were free to go look around at all the cars and make comments without a dealer breathing down our necks. If you are an introvert and need to buy a used car, then this is the place for you. There was a black 2005 Chrysler Town and Country with only 90,500 miles on it, and we were pretty impressed with it. So we test drove it and were still impressed with it, so we decided to go home and look at reviews of that particular van. Before we went home we stopped another dealership and it was completely different. It felt like your standard oily car dealership, and we didn't like it. It took forever to even look at any cars because the worker had to take us in and look up cars on the computer, and in the end he couldn't even find the cars we were interested in out in the lot. (He was a nice guy, we just didn't like the dealership.)
On Monday we decided to go back to Westgate and test drive the Chrysler Town and Country on the freeway. It seemed to run well. When we got back we talked to the dealer and talked to each other and decided to buy the van. It seemed like a really good option for us and we were able to pay for it outright. I still didn't like spending all that money in one place, though. : )
The other insurance company paid for us to rent a car while we were searching for a new one. We got to drive a very new Toyota Corolla that ran great but reeked of cigarette smoke. It was a relief to take it back when we were done with it.
On Thursday we took the van out to the Croatan National Forest so I could get more water samples (which is a story for another day). While we were driving on the highway the tail light fell off. It was still attached by the cable but the actual light was just hanging down and banging on the car, so Ryan took it off. No auto parts stores had lights we could buy to replace it, so we had to take the light off and drive without one tail light. When we got home Ryan ordered one off of Amazon, but then when I was talking to a friend he said we should call West Gate and ask if they would take care of it. They said to bring the van because they probably had a tail light from another van lying around, so they replaced it and we cancelled our order. (Phew! Money saved!)
The other minor issue we had was that there was only one key to the van, but we figured we would just make do until we could afford to order another one since they are kind of expensive. Then Ryan was removing a satellite radio that a previous owner had attached to the radio and he discovered another key that had been stuck behind the satellite radio. So now we have two keys. Awesome!
Did I mention how many cool features this van has? It has power sliding doors (which you can open using buttons by the driver's seat, buttons by the doors, or buttons on the key), you can control the radio using buttons on the steering wheel, it can hold six CDs at a time, and both rows of seats in the back can be stowed in the floor. They're certainly not essential to my existence, but they do make driving with kids a little more convenient. It's nice to just release the kids into the car while I buckle them in instead of having Kevin run away or mess with things in the front seat while I buckle Heidi in, which is what we had to do in the old car. It also has a LATCH system for the car seats, which is pretty convenient. It's kind of like having a rocket ship. We keep discovering cool stuff the van can do. Hopefully it will be a good car for us and last a long time.
And if you made it through this post I'm impressed. I've told family and friends the basic details of the story, but this is the full version for posterity.
The kids approve of the van:
Here it is after driving on mud and dirt roads all over the Croatan National Forest:
Stow 'n' go seats in both rows in back:
And here is a link to a picture posted by the dealership: http://www.cstatic-images.com/supersized/DMI/105643/0721/04.jpg
On Thursday, February 28th, the kids and I were in our first car crash. We had gone to Jared and Kristi's house to play with Kristi and Lily and Zach, and I was bringing the kids home for naps and so I could go to class. I was driving in the right lane on a main road when a girl didn't see us and pulled out of a Wendy's parking lot. I had a couple of seconds to react, but I knew before it happened that I wouldn't be able to slow down enough to avoid colliding. I did have a calm feeling that we would be okay. The right front corner of our car hit the left front corner of her car and our car was pushed about halfway into the left lane. Fortunately it wasn't a very violent collision and nobody was injured. None of us even had any whiplash afterwards.
The girl got out and I rolled my window down. There were a lot of cars trying to go around our car, so I didn't get out right away. She said that it looked like the body of the car was hanging down on the tire and she didn't think it would be a good idea to drive it, so I just turned on the emergency lights. When I had a chance I got out and looked at the damage and agreed that it might not be a good idea to try to drive the car and move it out of the way. There was a stiff piece of the body that was touching the tire and I thought it would pop the tire if I drove. The other girl called the police, and an officer arrived in a few minutes. He thought it would be okay if I drove the car enough to get into a side street, so I did that and it was okay, but now the body was definitely digging into the tire and I knew we would not be driving home.
The interesting thing was that Ryan and I had received inspiration in various ways in the month before the accident that prepared me for this experience. We acted on some of it but unfortunately not on all of it. I had been feeling like I should make a list of important phone numbers so that if we got in an accident or the car broke down somewhere I would be able to call Jared and Kristi or a friend from the ward and also call roadside assistance. I had also been feeling like I should put some minutes on our cell phone and stick it in the car. (We don't carry around cell phones, but we have a very basic pay-as-you-go cell phone, and since we hardly ever use it we hadn't bothered to put more minutes on it for a while.) Unfortunately I never got around to doing either of those things. I ended up borrowing the other driver's cell phone to try to call Ryan, who wasn't home yet, and I didn't know any other phone numbers for people I could call.
A few weeks before the accident, Ryan said we should have a family home evening to talk about what to do if we had a car accident or the car broke down somewhere. He showed me what's covered on the insurance policy and told me about what the process is for filing a claim, and told me about what information to get from the other driver. So I at least knew what to do for that. Roadside assistance was one of the numbers I had been planning to put on my list for the car. While I was getting things out of the glove compartment I noticed there was a form in there with some contact information for USAA (where we get our auto insurance). I decided to call them and see if they could get me a tow truck (all of this was on the other driver's phone, and I was kicking myself for not putting our cell phone in the car). USAA was so helpful and got a tow truck for me and then the person on the phone did a conference call with Ryan (who was fortunately home at that point) so I could tell him what had happened. Ryan gave us Jared and Kristi's number and then the associate did a conference call with them so I could ask them to give us a ride home. So yay for Ryan for listening to the Holy Ghost.
The kids didn't cry after the accident, but after I had moved the car I guess for Kevin it finally sunk in that something slightly scary had happened, and he started to cry. I got him out of his seat to comfort him and it took a while for him to calm down. It was kind of cold outside, but he refused to get back in the car because he was scared. Heidi went to sleep. There was a little Asian grandma going into Wendy's who tried to convince me in broken English that I needed to put Kevin back in the car because it was cold, but since I was talking on the phone and talking to the police officer I couldn't really explain to her that he was scared to get back in the car after what had happened. She gave up on me and went inside, but I did notice she kept looking out the window at us with a very concerned look on her face.
After Kevin had calmed down he looked at the car and was so interested in the fact that it was broken. He kept going over to the other driver and telling her our car was broken. Then he saw her car and said, "Oh! Your car is broken too! Oh, dear, your car is broken." I felt sort of bad because she already felt bad about causing the accident and Kevin was rubbing it in, but oh well.
We had to take everything out of the car before the tow truck took the car away. Oh, and by the way, I had also been thinking I should probably clean out the car. There were lots of little slips of paper with addresses and directions on them, several water bottle lids, and a lot of other things. Fortunately, the last time Ryan drove the car he had taken out the garbage and recycling and had saved the garbage bags from the recycling, so I just stuffed everything haphazardly in the garbage bags. The tow truck driver helped. Then he towed our car away. It was the last time we would ever see our Honda Accord.
The insurance company said it was likely that our car would not be worth repairing because of its age, so we started looking at cars. We found out the next Tuesday that they decided the car was a total loss and they would be giving us a check towards buying a new car. We wanted to be able to get a car that was at least as good as the one we lost, but based on the value of the car on our tax return we wouldn't get enough money to do that. Used cars are more expensive right now. We found cars that were basically the same mileage and year as our car that were selling for only $200 less than what we paid for ours five years ago. Fortunately, they are giving us more money than we expected, so it worked out. I still think it's a shame that the car was totaled because it was a great car and would have lasted many more years, but maybe somebody will buy it and think it's worth fixing.
Then we had to decide whether we should get another sedan or upgrade to more space. Eventually we want to have more kids, and it's hard to fit more than two kids in full car seats in the back seat of a sedan. Before the accident we were planning to try to fit three in the car and maybe buy skinnier car seats. But since we had to buy a new car now anyway, it seemed like maybe it was time to get a minivan. After thinking about it a lot it seemed like getting a minivan was the right choice for us. We did a lot of our shopping online using Cars.com, which was really helpful for getting an idea of what prices you would get for certain mileages, models, and ages.
We found a place called Westgate Auto Imports that had a few reasonably priced vans in our price range, so we decided to check them out. It was a great experience. We showed up and they gave us a list of the cars in the lot with their information, including prices, and told us we were free to go look at the cars and the cars should all be unlocked. So we were free to go look around at all the cars and make comments without a dealer breathing down our necks. If you are an introvert and need to buy a used car, then this is the place for you. There was a black 2005 Chrysler Town and Country with only 90,500 miles on it, and we were pretty impressed with it. So we test drove it and were still impressed with it, so we decided to go home and look at reviews of that particular van. Before we went home we stopped another dealership and it was completely different. It felt like your standard oily car dealership, and we didn't like it. It took forever to even look at any cars because the worker had to take us in and look up cars on the computer, and in the end he couldn't even find the cars we were interested in out in the lot. (He was a nice guy, we just didn't like the dealership.)
On Monday we decided to go back to Westgate and test drive the Chrysler Town and Country on the freeway. It seemed to run well. When we got back we talked to the dealer and talked to each other and decided to buy the van. It seemed like a really good option for us and we were able to pay for it outright. I still didn't like spending all that money in one place, though. : )
The other insurance company paid for us to rent a car while we were searching for a new one. We got to drive a very new Toyota Corolla that ran great but reeked of cigarette smoke. It was a relief to take it back when we were done with it.
On Thursday we took the van out to the Croatan National Forest so I could get more water samples (which is a story for another day). While we were driving on the highway the tail light fell off. It was still attached by the cable but the actual light was just hanging down and banging on the car, so Ryan took it off. No auto parts stores had lights we could buy to replace it, so we had to take the light off and drive without one tail light. When we got home Ryan ordered one off of Amazon, but then when I was talking to a friend he said we should call West Gate and ask if they would take care of it. They said to bring the van because they probably had a tail light from another van lying around, so they replaced it and we cancelled our order. (Phew! Money saved!)
The other minor issue we had was that there was only one key to the van, but we figured we would just make do until we could afford to order another one since they are kind of expensive. Then Ryan was removing a satellite radio that a previous owner had attached to the radio and he discovered another key that had been stuck behind the satellite radio. So now we have two keys. Awesome!
Did I mention how many cool features this van has? It has power sliding doors (which you can open using buttons by the driver's seat, buttons by the doors, or buttons on the key), you can control the radio using buttons on the steering wheel, it can hold six CDs at a time, and both rows of seats in the back can be stowed in the floor. They're certainly not essential to my existence, but they do make driving with kids a little more convenient. It's nice to just release the kids into the car while I buckle them in instead of having Kevin run away or mess with things in the front seat while I buckle Heidi in, which is what we had to do in the old car. It also has a LATCH system for the car seats, which is pretty convenient. It's kind of like having a rocket ship. We keep discovering cool stuff the van can do. Hopefully it will be a good car for us and last a long time.
And if you made it through this post I'm impressed. I've told family and friends the basic details of the story, but this is the full version for posterity.
The kids approve of the van:
Here it is after driving on mud and dirt roads all over the Croatan National Forest:
Stow 'n' go seats in both rows in back:
And here is a link to a picture posted by the dealership: http://www.cstatic-images.com/supersized/DMI/105643/0721/04.jpg
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