12
Jul 2010
I hate to buy cars more than anything in the world. I can think of any number of things that I would rather do than buy a new car. This is mostly because of some bad experiences that we’ve had. A few years ago, we bought a Kia that was a complete lemon. Then there was the Auction Direct incident that ended up costing us a large sum of money thanks to some fraudulent business practices. Buying cars is just not something that I like to do. I can’t understand how people can do it every few years without developing sever ulcers.
Imagine the stress that I started to feel when I realized that our 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan with almost 200,000 miles on it needed to have a new computer installed. Since the van is only worth around $1,000 on a good day when all of the planets are aligned and the repair would likely cost as much as the vehicle was worth, Holly and I decided that it was time to get something new. Let the stress begin…
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Category: Cars
Tags: Auction Direct, Beutler Auto, Clearfield, dealership, Dodge, Grand Caravan, Holly, Kia, negotiation, new car, repair, van
11
Jul 2010
Those who know us know that we’re avid campers. We go camping multiple times each summer and hate to see each weekend go by because we know that it’s one less chance for us to go camping. This year though, I was a bit concerned about going camping because of Lincoln. In the past, when we’ve taken our babies camping, it’s usually an exhausting experience that involves listing to a baby cry for a few days. Being the family of campers that we are though, Holly was determined to not going to let a little thing like the potential for a crying baby deter us from sleeping in the wild.
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Category: Family, Lincoln, Vacation
Tags: Camping, Family, fishing, global warming, Kids, Lincoln, Mapleton, Ozark Trail, Springbar, tent, van, Wal-Mart
20
Oct 2008
If you were to walk into any store these days, you would probably think that the next holiday to be celebrated was Christmas. Contrary to retailer belief though, we actually have two holidays, including one pretty major one, between now and Christmas.
In just a few short weeks, we will celebrate the end of the harvest by stuffing our faces. This holiday is know as Hallowe’en or, if you’re not into traditional spellings, Halloween. Ironically, we will not be partaking of the fruits of said harvest but will be gorging ourselves on sugary confections originating in Hershey, Pennsylvania and McLean, Virginia (home of M&M’s).
On Saturday, our ward held their annual trunk or treat. This is a safe environment where neighborhood kids can run around a parking lot and get candy from people sitting in and around their vehicles. Normally, I try to encourage my kids to not take candy from people that are sitting in their car but for this, I made an exception. We have about 4.3 million kids living within our ward boundaries so, as you can probably imagine, there were a lot of kids running around in costumes.
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Category: Alex, Emma, Hannah
Tags: Alex, candy, candy buckets, Cars, Church, confections, Halloween, Hannah, Hershey Pennsylvania, holiday, McLean Virginia, neighborhood kids, parking lot, tootsie rolls, van, ward boundaries
13
Oct 2008
Now that the basement is almost completely finished, I decided that the weekend would be spent trying to clean the garage enough to allow one of our vehicles to be parked inside. I have always taken great pride in the fact that, unlike some of our neighbors, we could actually park both vehicles in the garage and still have room to walk around them. When we decided to start working on the basement though, all that changed. I still took pride in being able to park in the garage, I just couldn’t. It’s amazing how much room sheetrock, lumber, bathroom stuff, etc. takes up.
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Category: House
Tags: basement, bikes, car, garage, lawnmower, lumber, maneuverability, mess, Saturn, scooter, shed, sheetrock, stuff, tiller, van
