Tuesday, March 22, 2011

It's like raiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnn on your wedding day

How ironic is it to take your maiden voyage in your new convertible and have it totaled all at once? Shall we ask Alanis? Nah.

Buuuut, March seems to have become the month of cars for us. Here are our stories.

Story #1

On Friday night we realized the snow had melted and we should take Dad's Camaro for our date night. We got the vehicle insured, but when we went to leave the battery was dead after sitting all winter. :( On Saturday, Dave got the battery fixed and drove it to church in the morning. Sunday afternoon Henry spilled paint on the carpet. :( again. The new carpet downstairs. Luckily, I flooded it, and kept it wet while I sent him to break the Sabbath and buy a carpet cleaner. He wasn't a fan of breaking the Sabbath, so he drove out to N. Logan to borrow Julie Allen's Bissel Little Green carpet cleaner. It's such an awesome little machine.

As he drove home, someone ran a stop sign and collided with Dave. TOTALED my dad's beautiful Camaro. ARRRGGGG. The Camaro that he had put SOOOOO much more money into, than it was worth. I mean we're talking 2x+ the value of the car. Poor Dave was SO deflated. He was so excited to have a red convertible, and to keep my dad around.

Story #2
I have been frustrated with my Suburban lately. It didn't have anything dramatically wrong with it, just lots of little quirks. Like running out of gas 10 minutes after it was at 1/8 a tank. In.my.friends.driveway. (one time it happened to be at Julie Allens house, for goodness sakes, they must think we are cursed) With gas prices rising I kept thinking that it would be a good time to sell my Suburban because it has CNG installed on it. I talked with my mom about it a few times, but figured I would wait until the summer.

In looking at comps of convertibles online, I decided to throw my Suburban on KSL at a high price. I figured since I had no intention of selling it, if I priced it really high, I could afford to wait as long as it took to find a buyer. No pressure. I listed it, and within the first day I think I had 15 responses. Whoops. It was a disaster, I had to keep pushing people off telling them it wasn't ready to show. 2 days later I pulled my act together and cleaned the car and showed it. I sold the car that day for $3500 more than I paid for the vehicle. Who does that? Who puts 40,000 miles on a vehicle and then makes money? I was so shocked, and I still can't quite believe it's gone.

So I spent 3 full days of completely ignoring my children to try to find a new Suburban. I didn't bathe them, or feed them, or even really pay attention to them (probably exaggerated a little) and I certainly didn't clean my house. I sat in bed on my laptop and searched for Suburbans.

Do you know how hard it is to find a used Suburban in Utah? It's like everybody just snatches them up. You know the 4 million car dealers on State St? Well, we drove through/by about 10-15 of them and found only maybe 3 Suburbans. Weird. So I found my Suburban online in San Antonio, where Suburbans must not be in very high demand. It's a couple thousand less than it would go for in Utah.

So now I wait for my car to arrive. And we still don't know what we will do with the Camaro. We would like to salvage it, but I don't know that it's possible. But I'm going to try to figure out how to get Dave a new convertible that he loves.


And here is Dave in his convertible on his first and last Sunday afternoon drive. *tear*

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Two Pictures...because I'm scanning pictures

Picture 1: Because it's tournament time, and 10 years ago I cheered at the tournament and held the Big West Tournament Cup when we won. I called my dad right after and the first thing he said was, "You're dancin'!!!" (Unfortunately, I had to "dance" at home, they didn't take the freshmen.)


Picture 2: Because many people have never seen pictures of my heavier days. I weighed 40 pounds more then. Look at my big arms! And look at cute little Kate, when she was tiny and sweet......

Friday, March 4, 2011

I was raised....

Going to the racetrack with my dad like all good girls do. What? You didn't grow up with your dad taking you to the racetrack? It's such a wholesome atmosphere: drinking, gambling, smoking, swearing.....to name a few. Haha! In the years before my dad was baptized, he took great pride in his racehorses. This picture is of his all time favorite horse, EZ Ben. We always went down to the track at Freehold in NJ, and it was something I looked forward to as a kid. I remember taking my friend once and we both came home with long sleeved white t-shirts that had beer advertisements on them. Now that is some quality loot! And for years we used the free umbrellas my dad picked up there that had not so subtle COORS written on them.

Anyway, I found this picture when I was cleaning out my dad's office, and it includes my mom next to my Grandpa George and Grandma Lena, and the cute little girl my dad is holding, just happens to be me. And then there is Uncle Frank who looks like he's wearing an underwear shirt. I don't know who the other dudes in the picture are, or where my older sisters are? Anyway, I thought it was some fun family history.