Mormon Battalion and The New Car

We finally picked up the replacement for the Stratus last Wednesday night.  It is a 2002 Toyota Camry with 102000 miles on it.  It drives nice, but it has just a few quirks that take a little while to get used to.

I’ve decided that relationships with cars of this age and mileage are kind of like dating someone new back in college when you’re not a very confident person and you’re dating someone out of your league.  In a situation like that you find yourself being extra sensitive to every little word and expression that the other person makes, just waiting for them to dash your hopes and dreams.  It’s kind of like that with the car.  I find myself wondering about every little noise and rattle.  “Oh great, here it comes, the car is going to fall apart or catch on fire or something”.  I just don’t trust the car yet.  It will come in time, but let’s just say that right now our relationship is tenuous and guarded.

We also went to the Mormon Battalion commemoration event on Saturday.  It was a lot of fun with booths featuring fun activities for the kids like panning for gold, rope making, doll making, biscuit on a stick and others.  The commemoration is fun, but I recommend making a visit to the Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center even if it is not the one day a year where there is the event.  They’ve recently remodeled it and it is a really great experience.  It’s down in Old Town San Diego.  We took a few pictures.

Good and Bad News

I’ll start with the bad news.  Our family has had to bid farewell to the Stratus.  That’s right, it didn’t survive the surgery at the auto body shop.  It was told that the cost of the repairs exceeded the value of the car.  So we’ve got a good little settlement from the other driver’s insurance company, but we’d like to replace the car without getting another payment and without digging too much into savings.  It’s tough to find another car at the price we want, but we’re working  through it.  In the meantime, I made some minor repairs to my bike on Saturday so it may be my primary means of transportation to work for the next little while.

Now on to the good news.  Dayna went in for her half-way ultrasound today and after they did all the technical measurements, they invited me in too.  The ultrasound tech told me on the way into the room that she already knew what it was.  I figured out from the way that she sounded so confident that she had seen some boy parts.  And sure enough, we’re having a boy!  The wonderful thing about this is that it would have been good news if it were a girl too!  The tech couldn’t comment good or bad about the results, but to my untrained eye, things looked pretty good.  The heart had all four chambers.  I’m proud to say that after four previous experiences, I could kind of actually make out what we were looking at on the screen, unlike with the first one when you just actually wonder what you’re looking at (is that an alien? Are those parts connected to the other parts?).  I had said it was a boy and Dayna thought it was a girl.  We had a little wager and now she gets to take me to Phil’s BBQ. 

10-hour Car Rides and a Tough Way to Start 2011

We made it back from our trip to Idaho for Christmas and we survived the cold and snow and the long car ride as well. There are lots of fun ways to pass ten hours in the van like spelling your last name with pretzels (credit goes to Dayna).

We only had two throw-up instances (neither one was in the car, thank goodness) on the way home.  We stayed in Beaver, UT on New Year’s Eve where it was –10 F when we arrived.  It was 11:40 pm, so keeping the kids up until midnight was pretty easy.  Getting them to go to sleep after that was not as easy, but we eventually got to sleep.  We got to visit with Joe and Chantelle on the way home and arrived to find everything well at home.

It was back to work and school on Monday morning.  We had some rain that morning and so the roads were wet.  I was stopped at a light and a truck hauling a heavy trailer slid into me and damaged the Dodge Stratus!  Many tears were shed.  We’re working on getting it fixed.  Other than that, the transition to being back home has been pretty smooth.  The weather has been nice.  Till next time.