Ode to the van

I posted on facebook this week that my van was on its last legs. It has a host of things wrong with it that require a minimum of $2500 of work done to even register the thing in Washington. I'm not inclined to do that on a van that is 13 years old. But I also wasn't planning on adding a car payment to our budget at the moment as we're still so new here and haven't gotten but one normal paycheck yet. It's hard to know how our budget even looks until a few months have gone by. 

So we're improvising. We still have the Jeep, but it only seats five. We don't have many times we need to drive all six of us, but when we do we'll drive the van. When not we'll drive the Jeep and I'm sure I'll get lots of interesting looks when I have all four kids and they come tumbling out of it. I'm not a huge fan of putting a kid in the front, but I have to if I take everyone because all the seatbelts in the back are full. We'll limp along for a few months until we have a better feel for the budget and then hopefully get a new van. Well, new to us.

I have to say, I didn't anticipate this problem happening right now, though I'm not shocked, but I'm just really grateful that this van, that we've owned for five years, has trekked through all that time safely. We made it through the 3,100 drive to Washington two months ago with not one single problem with it. I'm honestly glad I didn't have time to have it checked out before we left because I'm sure some of these problems were there before and we would have been super worried the whole drive. But it got us here safely and we definitely got our money's worth out of our $7000 purchase. Five years isn't bad! Now if I can convince someone to take it off my hands when I do buy a new one.

We had a lovely week. My mother-in-law was in town and she spoiled us, like she is so good at doing. We went to parks and ate tasty food and played with our cousins and generally had a lovely time.

We got some new toys this week for our kids. Replaced our trampoline, bought a basketball hoop. Hopefully those get them outside more as time goes by.

And in great news for me, we finally bought a treadmill! I've wanted one for no joke, my entire marriage, but never had room for it. But we saved all our Christmas money and Costco rebate and such and it arrived two days ago. I love it, Bill loves it, and my kids love it. They think running on it is a treat and I had to wake up my three older kids at 8:20 this morning from a dead sleep to get ready for school. They've never in their lives slept that late. They got good workouts yesterday!

So really, it's been pretty much the best week in a very long time despite our van woes. I'll take it!

Grandma is in town

We've been anticipating this visit from Grandma Suzanne since we moved to Washington and it has not disappointed. Bill and I got away for a quick morning date up to Rattlesnake Ledge to go snowshoing Saturday morning. It was delightful. We're not in nearly good enough shape, but we'll be back to try it again sometime for sure. I'm already shopping for kids snowshoes and gear, ha! We did have to turn back a bit earlier than expected because Bill's strap snapped on one shoe. Figures since they were in our attic for six years in South Carolina and we haven't used them for nine years. Whoops! But replacements are cheap, so all is well. 

 It was just so beautiful and so snowy and amazing.

 Grandma brought the kids some Harry Potter glasses. Genevieve has been wearing hers nonstop since Grandma gave them to her. She wants her own glasses so much. They're all adoroable in them.

We're just so glad Grandma came and we still have five more days to play.

Snow, snow, and more snow

Oh, you know, just a million pictures from Seattle Snowpocalypse 2019. We've had great fun. If we're lucky, this will be our last day off school and the kids will actually get to have their Valentine's Day parties tomorrow. We're already off Thursday and Friday and Monday and we've had no school yesterday and today. So unexpected vacation where you're sort of stuck at home? We've watched a lot of movies and played a lot in the snow and sledded like crazy. Lots of hot chocoloate. It's been a good time with all this completely unexpected and crazy snow these last ten days. Oh, and we tried out the Museum of Flight on the free first Thursday event of the month and we will definitely be back. It was so awesome. 

 Cutie Chloe and Bill.

 My friend passed me a ton of her fabric and I used some of it to make some curtains.

Baptism Day

Spencer got baptized on Saturday, surrounded by family and new friends we've made since moving to Washington. It was lovely. We had Bill's sister and family here, who live in the area, plus my mom and grandma, sister, and aunt and uncle. I haven't seen several of them for years and it truly was a lovely weekend.

We tried out one of the zillion parks in the area on Saturday and had a great time on the zipline there and going on a little hike.

The baptism was wonderful. Bill baptized Spencer, and when he woke up Sunday morning he had a terrible cold that kept him in bed all day, so I was just so grateful that it didn't hit until Sunday.

We played games last night together and the kids reveled in all the attention from their family and we ate lots of good food and celebrated some birthdays too. I couldn't ask for a better weekend.

And last of all, we got blanketed with a beautiful carpet of snow, more than I've seen since before we moved to South Carolina. Thankfully my sister was able to drive herself to the airport safely very early this morning and the rest of my family are driving over presently. There are at least four inches of snow fallen and it's still coming down for a few more hours yet. Bill's bus route is canceled, so he's not quite sure how to get to work, so it's an adventurous day today.

 

The snow started out pretty light, but it kept coming and coming.

And now this morning we have probably four inches and it's all over the road. Exciting weather here in Seattle!