Just because July 22, 2009

Baby Girl, flapping around the living room in her undies, a Dora backpack, and a princess crown: “Look! I’m running around like an owl! With my eyes! And like Tinkerbell, too!”

Hilarious.

  Now she’s added a yellow sun hat under her crown and declared herself a cowboy.

Morning at the playground July 18, 2009

(Click on pictures to see larger)

Some photos… July 17, 2009

 

(Click on the photos to see them larger) 

 

 

She was pretending to be a frog here. :)

Modeling the necklace Aunt Alicia made her

Reading to Diego

Wordless Wednesday July 15, 2009

Okay, not exactly wordless…

see more Fail Blog

Oh, Murphy… July 13, 2009

Okay, enough already. I need to rant a little. I think we have had more random financial “disasters” in the past two months than a family should have by pure chance. What do you think? I mean, all of these problems have been about things, so I know it’s just stuff and money (I’m made of money, aren’t you?), but OH MY WORD. The people here in Iowa must think our family is a walking disaster. Believe me, this is all new.

After our concrete slab leak under our four year old house to the tune of $1000 (while Andrew was in Iowa and I was still at home with Baby Girl trying to pack), I thought we might be done with Murphy for a while. We had also replaced the Tahoe’s transmission and some other ungodly expensive parts that month, so I thought that was just a bonus to ensure we could wait a while for the next “emergency.” Ha.

When my car died right before the first girls’ trip I have planned in forever, I was thankful that it died near our apartment and could be pushed to a nearby mechanic. We did ask around about the mechanic, and no one had any horror stories, so we went with them to save having it towed. Their $240 estimate quickly turned into over $700. We knew the prices they were charging for the parts were horribly high, but we needed it fixed so I could go. We picked it up on Thursday, paid cash (stupid for once, should have paid with a check so we could stop payment on it), and I headed to Chicago.

Remember this post about the trip itinerary that never was? Here we go again.

Original plan:

• Leave home 2pm
• Arrive Chicago 6pm
• Pick up girlfriend at bus station (ironically, we decided to not have her bring her car to save money)
• Relax and recharge for a few days and take a much-needed break with an old friend

Nope.

Here’s what actually went down:

• Ignition clicks off at 70mph, I-88 60 miles outside of Chicago (middle of nowhere, 140 miles after the “repairs”)
• Call Andrew, who is on his way to pick up a visiting friend at the Dubuque airport about 2 hours from our house
• Cry
• Call tow truck guy, who is actually able to come quickly and takes me/car to a truck stop (better than it sounds–there was a restaurant, a Wendy’s, and I had a book)
• Wait for Andrew to come the 3 hour drive with a tow dolly–so he had to rent a tow dolly, cancel the rehersal he had scheduled, find someone to watch Baby Girl (so very, very thankful for this, as we didn’t get back at all when we thought), and drive to me
• Andrew and Dan arrive with the tow dolly and discover part of the trailer hitch ball/bolt thing (yep, that ’s what it’s called) has somehow fallen off. They’re lucky the dolly didn’t come off on the interstate.
• Go to two truck stops trying to find a replacement part
• Find a Wal-mart that does have the part
• After several attempts and the help of two nice truck stop patrons, get the car on the dolly and head home
• Pick up a very sleepy child at 2 AM and profusely apologize to the wonderful person who agreed to watch BG
• Park Tahoe and attached towed car at mechanic, barely resisting the urge to park it across their front door
• SLEEP

Updates: car is still wildly undiagnosed and broken, awaiting a call from the company owner in the morning, got the WONDERFUL and unexpected news that my friend Janelle is a miracle worker and was able to get a hotel refund from a company that does not offer refunds (I didn’t even pray for that, but God knew we needed it!), I was in a foul mood all weekend…but now starting to feel a little better. Life is short, and this is just money and stuff. Stay tuned for the rest of the car repair saga.

Update #2: Oh, AND the power steering went out on the Tahoe yesterday, giving Andrew Forearms of Steel. Or something like that.