PART 1 CAR DRAMA
Whew! Glad the last two...ok, maybe three weeks, are over. It has been one thing after another around our house, and none of it good.
It all started back the weekend of husband's birthday with car trouble....MAJOR car trouble. We have a volvo SUV and I love it. It is our only car that can hold all six of us, including car seats, at the same time. That being said, when something goes wrong or we have to have maintenance done on the volvo, it means the kids and I are pretty much stranded at home while it is in the shop. So basically, some part broke. Not even a really expensive part. Some kind of pulley broke, and a ball bearing in the broken pulley in turn did MAJOR damage to the "housing" of the engine (I think) which is an expensive fix. Naturally. And when did this part break? Of course it was at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning as we were all packed up and headed out of town. Nothing is open at 7 on a Saturday morning except the donut shop. The only stroke of good luck in the car breaking down saga was that the part broke as we pulled up to my parents' house here in town to drop off Phoebe for the weekend. We were able to coast down the hill to the service station that is about a block or so from my parents and leave the car there to be dealt with Monday morning.
Because my mother-in-law had planned a cookout in Snowball (husband's hometown) to celebrate both my husband's and father-in-law's birthdays we called all over town to find a rental car at the last minute. Of course rental car agencies don't open until 9:00 am at the earliest and most of those places don't have mini-vans or large SUV's for rent on a moment's notice. There was only ONE mini-van available anywhere in town and only ONE large SUV available. We went with the mini-van because we got a better rate. Here is husband looking oh so happy with our rental, the "Mom-mobile."
On a side note, this is the second time this summer we have had a rental mini-van. The first was while the volvo was at the body shop after an unfortunate small run in with a concrete pole. Ooops! Anyway, based on my two recent experiences with the mini-van I have a few comments, concerns, revelations to share.
1. I will admit that yes...the mini-van has more storage room than my SUV. And I will also admit that I like the fact that it has more storage room. We cart lots of stuff around and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
2. I will also admit that yes...the mini-van has more leg (cabin) room than my SUV. And I like the extra leg room in the van. I was able to walk through to re-buckle Ella's car seat straps after she unbuckled herself while driving down the road.
3. Our first rented mini-van had automatic open and close side doors. Very convenient; however, they made me nervous. Nervous that little fingers would get caught in them and nervous that they weren't closed securely. Automatic doors don't make that good "thud" noise so you know they are good and closed. I will say the big kids LOVED the automatic doors.
4. Our second mini-van was a more basic model than the first and had one MAJOR flaw in my eyes. Such a major flaw I would never buy this type of van because of it. This flaw....you can take the car out of park without your foot being on the break. How did we discover this? At church Sunday morning while husband and I unbuckling Ella, Harrison and Ava, John David reached through to the front seat and pulled on the gear shift, shifting the car out of park and into neutral. The parking brake was ON; however this did not stop the car from rolling down the slight incline, almost taking me out in the process. Thankfully, the van rolled into the curb which stopped it before it could really roll away, cause an accident, or seriously hurt anyone. I was left with a very bruised arm from being hit as the van started rolling. I probably wouldn't have thought this was a big deal until I had children. Now I will NEVER own a car that can be shifted out of park without having your foot on the brake.
5. The biggest revelation....although the van did have more room storage and otherwise, I really love my volvo and feel much less like the soccer mom with too many kids driving it than I did driving the van around. That being said, my guess is there is almost zero chance that I will never own a mini-van. With four children, we are going to need the room.
Anyhow, back to the car drama. The car was in the shop for an entire week leaving us to figure out how to get husband to and from work, run errands, etc. with only one car that couldn't fit all of us. Of course, the week we were without the big car was also the week of Vacation Bible School at church. The three big kids were signed up for VBS and I was signed up to volunteer. Some very good friends helped me shuttle the children back and forth each day. Two in her large SUV with her son, that was the boy car, and the two girls with me in husband's car. My parents also loaned us their station wagon for husband to get himself to and from work.
After a week of shuttling children around in multiple cars, they finally had the volvo fixed, except, at the very last minute they called and said they thought we had a coolant leak. They didn't know where it was coming from and didn't have an estimate on how long it would take to find or what it would cost to fix. They said they would have to tear the whole car apart AGAIN to find it. Since it wasn't a major leak and we really needed our big car back husband told the dealership to just top off the coolant and we would take it somewhere else to have the leaked repaired. He was pretty fed up with the dealership by then.
Thankfully we have our car back. We can all ride together anywhere we want or need to go. Best of all, the children and I are stuck at the house all day every day with no way to go anywhere. We also were able to make it to husband's birthday cookout which made his mother EXTREMELY happy.
Stay tuned for Part 2 ....Children Misbehaving
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