Vacation Prep (AKA Needing a Vacation to get over Vacation Prep)

Oh vacation, how I love you.

Every year my in-laws rent a house somewhere big enough for the entire family to go stay and be together for a week. We've done Honeoye Lake twice, Autumn Lake (Adirondacks area) twice, and this was our third year in Salvo in the Outer Banks. We stayed in a different house than the previous two years and really enjoyed the new place!

Now I don't know about you, but planning for a vacation is hard. It's easier now that the kids are older and we don't have to worry about diapers and all the other baby things, but still trying to get a family of five packed for a week and getting two animals prepped to leave is challenging.

To Do Lists!

And this year decided to throw us a couple curve balls.

We knew this year would be a little different. Our house still has a For Sale/Sale Pending sign in front of it, and even though we don't live in a village or city, a lot of traffic goes by here everyday. We were a little nervous about leaving our house vacant for a week, but we took steps to make sure that it wouldn't look fully abandoned: our cat was going to stay here and our neighbor would check on him nightly, and some friends were also going to come and harvest our garden while we were away. It's not as much movement at our house to make it look occupied, but we thought it would be enough. (And it was!)

The one problem about the house still being Sale Pending was that we didn't know if we'd need anyone to come through the house for various appointments during the week, and one even got scheduled for the morning we were going to be leaving....meaning we had to leave the house SPOTLESS. That's hard enough to do on any given day, but trying to get your house spotless while trying to leave for vacation is a whole other level of craziness!

The biggest curve ball of them all we didn't even begin to expect.

We swung by my in-law's house on Wednesday to drop off some things, and my father-in-law commented on how our exhaust was sounding loud. We thought it was just a heat shield, so he said to bring it over early Thursday morning and he'd help Pete take a look at it.

Thursday morning came, Pete took the van over. I'm home with the three kids, babysitting an additional two, and trying to pack. Pete calls: the fixed the heat shield, didn't really see anything wrong with the exhaust, but there's a squeaking and squealing noise. They took it to the mechanic's, and the water pump is dying. And two front bolt springs (I think that's what they were??? Definitely part of the front suspension...) were completely broken and could cause real damage at any point....also known as, van isn't leaving the shop OOOOR going on vacation. Big $$$$$ flashed in front of our eyes!

So Pete and his dad checked into rental vans, and we didn't want to pay the price to rent one. We decided to take our car, and my in-laws graciously offered to take one of our kids in their vehicle so we wouldn't have to have three kids crammed in the back of our car. Thankfully we had fixed the car and it's issues earlier in the summer so all it needed was for the air conditioning to be recharged for it to be ready to go.

Even with all of the craziness and our plans going straight out the window, we are so thankful. We are glad Pete's dad had the wisdom and foresight to check our van, thankful there was space for Paige in their truck, thankful our friends and neighbors were able to look after our house, and just so thankful that we didn't try to take the van on vacation (we probably wouldn't have made it out of the state, or at least through Pennsylvania....it definitely wouldn't have made it over the bridges and bumps on the OBX island!).

We were able to leave our spotless house at 5:58 Friday morning (two minutes ahead of schedule!!!!), with Paigey securely in the back of her grandpa's truck and the boys snuggled in the back of our car. We were Virginia bound for the night, and were praying that all the bumps in the road were already behind us!

Up next: Friday afternoon fun in Virginia!

Decisions

Hey everyone...

Sorry for the silence around here the past few days. It's been mentally draining lately with us having to make some big decisions, and my brain needed a break. Apparently I let it rest so much that it decided to let another cold virus enter, and I'm trying to beat that into submission. Yay for kids sharing germs...yet again.

So what decisions did I/we have to make?

My role for VBS:
Last Sunday (the 10th) my mother-in-law approached me in church. She is the director for our VBS (vacation Bible school), and I usually handle all the decorations from planning, designing, making, and installing them all. She asked if I might be willing to design and lead all the crafts for the preschoolers this year, and that I could let her know within a week.

At first, I'm all "YES!" because the past few years of decorations have burned me out, and I was tired of making vines and trees and anything outdoorsy. But I also would have to give up VBS week; Ryan will be going this year, and Pete and I were going to be using those mornings of kid free time to get some house projects done that would go smoother without little hands trying to help. However, doing crafts would be much easier to plan; decorations takes months and all the supplies take over my house. Would giving up several months be worth just one week of mornings without kids be worth it? All last week I was going back and forth as what to choose, and it was really hard for me.

After a very emotional 2+ hour conversation with Pete on Friday (after I had babysat for 14 hours straight...eek!), I decided to stick with decorations. My heart wouldn't let it go; although they're a pain to plan and carry out, I love doing it so much. I'd love to be a crew leader or run the crafts one year, but until I feel completely led to hang up my decorator's hat, I'm going to be crazy decorating lady :)

On that note though, if anyone in the area has big pieces of cardboard, save them for me! I need lots and lots of pieces for this year!

Our van:
We've been planning on replacing our van (aka Iron Man) this upcoming summer and had been saving and saving so we could pay cash for it. Well, last week you may remember I blew a brake line, and Pete drove the van down to a local shop we like to use for emergencies on Thursday and it was fixed Friday. When we picked it up on Saturday, the mechanic told me that it was indeed a brake line, and the rest of the lines looked good. Yay! Everything in the middle of the van looks great, and all the important things also look great for the van's age (she's 10 this year). However, the supporting frame under the doors is rotting out so much that it's very very difficult to put her on the lift to get her in the air. She's still sound to drive, but looking for a replacement should start becoming a priority.

We had already started getting more serious about our search; whenever we start thinking about replacing our vehicles, they start to break; usually it's a bunch of little things followed by something big (all the brakes followed by fuel pump) or just something big unexpectedly (like an engine or transmission). When the brake line went, my radar starts going off that it's time to get something newer, and we started looking harder.

After consulting our experts (my mom and her Consumer Reports magazines as well as my dad, a mechanic for 30+ years) and checking out a few vehicles in person (Subaru Tribeca is waaaaay too small), we basically narrowed down our list to just be the Toyota Siennas. There was one only 20 minutes from our house and then 2 about 45 minutes from the house, but in opposite directions from each other. The one closest had the most miles and the highest price tag, but we figured we'd go check it out Saturday afternoon just to make sure we liked them. Why drive 45 minutes to discover you don't like something when you can drive 20, right?

We arrived at the dealership, and they brought the van up for us. Immediately we said no to that particular van; it was dirty on the inside and one of the AC adapters in the front wasn't securely attached, and when you tried to take the cap off the entire thing pulled out of the dash and had exposed wires. No thank you. We test drove it anyways (Pete did all the driving; why should I drive it if we weren't going to buy it?), and we loved the way it handled and how smooth the ride was. Pete said it was just like driving a car; not bad for it being the biggest minivan around!

We got back to the dealership, told them we weren't interested at that point, but if our other options didn't pan out, we'd be back. Our salesman being a salesman said if it was just price that was affecting our decision, we could definitely talk. We told him of the problems we had, and he was really upset that those hadn't been taken care of already, that those problems would definitely be taken care of. We told him that if they could take care of them, that maybe we would have a deal. He asked if we'd be trading a vehicle in, and we said we had our van, and we looked up a trade in value, and it was about $2000. Actually it was more like $1500-1600, but we wanted to see what we could get. One of the sales guys drove our van, talked to the guy who's in charge of the Sienna's price, and our sales guy came back with our number:

They were willing to give us $3500 for our van as a trade in.

That dropped the Sienna's price from just out of our budget to below $10,000. Definitely doable!

The total price we would pay including taxes and fees was just above $11,000, which meant that we could pay cash and still have more than $1,000 in our emergency savings fund.

So we had our deal: we'd buy the van if they could fix all the problems.

Deal!

So today I'm cleaning out Iron Man, and we're picking up this girl tonight:

Meet Sherlock!

Yes, we name our vehicles. This is the first non-superhero named vechile we've had in a while; Pete's white Subaru that was totaled last year was Storm, our current van is Iron Man, and Pete's current car, a black Elantra, is Batman. We didn't like any super hero names for the Sienna; names we had tossed around were Gandalf (from Lord of the Rings) and River (as in River Song from Doctor Who). Sherlock was the only one all five of us could agree on!

Pete's job for next year:
Okay, so we haven't made a decision on this for next year, but that's only because we don't know the full plan yet.

What we do know is that at least one of the schools he works at now is thinking about making him a .8 position. Although it would be nice to have him at just one school, a .8 is like the most annoying option. It's somewhere between part time and full time. It's almost full time, so he couldn't work at two schools, but still part time enough that finances would be tight.

The other school would love to make him full time, but we're waiting to hear how that goes.

Once we know what his employment is going to be like for next year, we will then decide if he should go back to school or not. At one school he has a technology position where he helps the teachers integrate more technology into their classrooms. The other school doesn't have any computer classes other than just an introductory class, and there may be an interest in adding more computer classes. Having Pete get a Master's degree in technology would help with job security and would benefit both schools. We just want to make sure he's employed enough to either let us have enough money to pay for the classes or have the school pay for them!

Kid's schooling:
This one isn't really a decision yet, but more of us wondering if we're going to have to make a decision in the next few years to home school. The idea is just floating around our heads right now, but the longer they're in school the more it seems like it may be a real option down the road. It's not because of problems behaviorally or with bullies in school, but more academics and that my kids are bored and need to be challenged more!


How are you all doing? Anything new with you guys?

Financial Friday: Learning To Say No To Debt

As you may know, we're van shopping.

No, not because I blew a brake line, but because it's getting older and we want to make sure we have time to shop around while we have the money for it so we don't have to take out another car loan.

On Saturday, we went and checked out a SUV. I love vans because of all the cargo space (very important with three kids, especially when one of them is going to want to start playing sports soon!), but I prefer the look of a SUV.

We happened to find a Subaru Tribecca in our price range and in a color I loved. I was getting my hopes up about it; we really miss having a Subaru, especially with the all wheel drive on our roads and driveway in the winter. However, the cargo space was half of what we currently have, and I had to say 'no' to it. Depressing, yes, but space is more important than the looks.

We looked at a Kia Sedona minivan, but it was smaller than our current van as well. Another no.

Then the salesman brought over a Toyota Sienna, which is my dream van. It was perfect! It had seating for eight, tons of cargo space, the back row of seats folded flat into the van (no more having to take them out for hauling furniture or for trips to the drive in!), and all the bells and whistles we could have ever wanted.

All five of us fell in love.

Then we saw the details: it was a 2011 with just over 14k miles on it. There was no way we'd be able to afford it without taking out a loan.

Would the van last us a long time? Definitely.

Did it have everything we wanted and needed in a new vehicle? Yes!!!!

But could we afford it? Probably, but at what cost? We'd be tied down to another loan, and we've worked so hard to get out of debt and build up our savings so we wouldn't have to get another loan when it came time to get a vehicle.

We said no. We walked away. We had to. It wasn't easy, but we wouldn't have enjoyed the van knowing how much debt we would have been in.

We have a couple other Siennas we're going to check out. They're not as new, and have a lot more miles on them. But both are relatively in our budget and should last us a few years. As long as there are no other problems with our current van, we're hoping to trade it in, haggle, and we'll still be able to pay cash without completely draining our savings account.

And we'll drive the new van away, excited to drive it knowing that it's paid in full.

When have you had to say no to something that was out of your budget? Have you ever said yes to debt and regretted it later?

This Isn't What I Meant!

Last night, I was exhausted.

Okay, so that's nothing new. But after a busy weekend of running errands and trying to catch up on things around here, Paigey's 6 month check up at the hospital, and then a long day of babysitting and a library meeting, I was more tired than normal.

Today I'm babysitting a half day and then after school, which leaves me with the morning off from babysitting. However, I had errands to run: activating my new debit card, making a deposit at the bank, and getting some much needed groceries. Trying to do all that with a cranky almost 3 year old on a tight schedule is not easy or fun.

I remember looking at Pete and telling him I would give just about anything to have a morning off to stay home and get things done. Just a morning! I wasn't even being greedy and asking for a whole day!!!

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn't have said anything.

This morning, Ryan and I got ready, and I dragged him out of the house kicking and screaming, loaded up the van with our cooler and bags, and off we went.

We didn't get very far.

When I put the van into drive, the van felt funny. I thought it was just because of the temperature changes, it was grumpy. It's an older van, and she's cranky in her old age.

We were driving down the road and were approaching a stop sign.

I started to brake. But I didn't slow down.

I was pushing really hard on the brakes and was able to get down to a coast, but couldn't stop.

My dashboard lit up like Christmas lights, "LOW BRAKE FLUID."

No, really? So very helpful.

Thankfully there hadn't been anyon one was at the intersection and I was able to do a turn around at one of the buildings at the corner. But I couldn't stop.

We slowly started making it back home, but the road we were on is hilly and the end of the road (right across from our house) is not a good intersection. We've witnessed many near accidents over the few years we've lived here, and have even had someone not stop at the intersection and run into our yard.

Let's just say it was the longest few minutes of driving I've had in a loooong time. I'm trying to not panic, and Ryan's freaking out because I made him get in the van to go shopping and then we turn around and head home. He was confused and very upset he wasn't getting his sucker at the bank.

We crawled to the stop sign, still unable to stop. We were blessed by having no cars coming, and we were able to get into our driveway, up the little hill, and finally stop.

I'm frustrated because my cupboards and fridge are still empty-ish, and I have little splatters of brake fluid all over my driveway. We'll now have to find time to fix the van and get groceries, and I'm not sure exactly when we'll have time to do that.

But we are home safe and sound. I'm so glad this happened down the road rather than in the parking garage on Monday, or even while we were out shopping where traffic is much heavier. What more can I ask for?

So off I go to get some jobs accomplished before babysitting kids arrive!


How's your day going? Hope it's a great one!