happenings

I know that most of you will be shocked to see that I am NOT posting about school being out due to snow. Shocking! (Though there is a chance for tomorrow...)

Sometimes life is funny. And when I mean funny, I mean expensive. You know what I mean, right?

Our "funny" lives began in November when Jonathon's car wrecked. (And I mean that literally, it was just the car.) Thankfully we have really good insurance. We still had to swallow a deductible, but they treated us more than fair, which is a LOT to say about a car insurance company. So we decided that my van was the most dire need we had. We would use the insurance money to put a good down payment on a new (to us) van. After all, I carry around our most precious possessions every day in it.

So we did. Jonathon took over driving the green van and I got the (hopefully) more reliable one. We knew that as soon as we could we would replace the green van for something more efficient. But for now, it got him to and from work.

That was our first "funny" thing.

Fast forward to our anniversary. I wish I could say that our next funny thing involved a romantic getaway, but it didn't. It involved our fridge.

After making those huge snowmen (scroll down a few posts to see them.) and finally putting the kids to bed we found a puddle of water between the kitchen and living room. I was confused at how it got there because I am usually fairly anal about getting snow cleaned up when people come in from outside. We have the pergo type laminate floors that look great until they warp from water damage. And when they get damaged, you have to tear up the entire floor because of how they lock together.

Anyway, we grabbed a towel to mop up the floor and soon realized that it wasn't snow resting on top of the wood, it was a puddle of water coming up underneath the wood. A little investigation and we realized it was from our fridge. A little more investigation and a lot of water later we learned that the water filter for the water you get out of the door had overflowed the condensation pan under the fridge and just kept spilling out. It leaked under the floor between the gaps of flooring and then gravity took it to the lowest part of the floor it could find. The well worn path between the kitchen and living room.

Thankfully we were able to figure out that all we need to fix the fridge was a new filter (and a little more vigilance to make sure it doesn't happen again!) The "funny" part is that now there are 3 rows of wood flooring that are nice and warped in that entry way. We are choosing not to do anything about the floor right now. We just caution the kids to watch their toes. If I can find a rug I like we might hide it better until we can fix it.

Move on to last week. Monday Jonathon called me on his way home from work saying the "check engine" light came on on the green van. We knew it would be happening soon so it wasn't a big surprise. He dropped it off at the mechanic and I came and got him. We wanted to see what it was and if we should try to fix it.

It turned out to be several things and $900 was too much. So Wednesday Jonathon took the day off work went car shopping. It took all day of looking and test driving before we even knew what we wanted. We knew we wanted a little gas saving car, but how much to spend? How much would we end up pouring into a used car? We can't afford another big car payment. It was exhausting. Finally after dinner Jonathon called me and was about to give up and come home. The most tempting car was a Civic. Jonathon really wanted another Civic, but there weren't many used ones around. And they didn't fit very well into our budget. (especially if you figure in unknown repairs!)

As the Honda dealership was closing we decided to go for a lease. We've never tried a lease, and they aren't for everyone. For some people they can be a really bad idea. But we figured how much Jonathon drives each day. How many longer trips he or I or both of us would take in it. (Our whole family won't fit in it in a few months!) And it seemed like it might just work. We were running all sorts of numbers and in the end decided that would likely work for us right now. The payment was really low. They even took the green van as a trade in and lowered the monthly payment. We bought the extra miles up front since they are less expensive that way. And Jonathon drove home in a shiny, new 2011 civic with 12 miles on it! We have a car payment, but it's totally manageable and we have a warranty which I am VERY glad about. I don't really like paying the mechanics boat payment!

At least this "funny" experience turned out better than we thought. And it's shiny and pretty too!

Forward again to last Saturday. I had done a few loads of laundry. Jonathon will open the washer door when it's done on his way through the garage so that the mold doesn't grow on the door gasket. When I went down Saturday morning to see if Cedar's uniform was there I was frustrated that he had opened the door before the clothes had spun dry. They were full of water. I reset the washer to do another rinse and spin and headed back upstairs. After Olive's game I came home and went to change laundry over when I noticed that he had done it again. Opened the door before the clothes were done. They were still soppy wet. I tried to just do a spin but I couldn't get the machine to just spin. That's when I realized that maybe Jonathon wasn't the culprit. After all, you can't open the door unless you cancel the wash or it is finished. I took out the load of soppy clothes and rung them out as much as I could then tried a new short quick load with just 2 towels. Jonathon wasn't going to be home for over an hour so if he was the culprit, he wouldn't have a chance to open the door.

Turns out it wasn't Jonathon. We stayed up (way too late) Saturday night tearing apart the washer trying to find the blocked hose. That's what we thought it was. (sometimes the internet can lead you in the wrong direction. *Just in case you didn't already know that.*) In the process we found the diagnostics sheet and ran the test. Our control panel is out. A little more internet searching gave us a last ditch effort to salvage it without paying the between $100-$200 for the new part with many people who have had that problem reporting it didn't fix it and they still had to pay for more parts until it worked again. It was frustrating. Our machine is only 3 years old. We thought it was a good one. It was a good one until it died.

Take a mini time out here to move to Sunday afternoon when Jonathon says to me that the dishwasher leaked that morning and there was a puddle on the floor. What do you say to that? We just looked at each other and laughed. It happened again Sunday night. We figured that thankfully it is just the door gasket. We've replaced it once before, but still... (Update on the dishwasher. I think that the powers that be must have decided that that was maybe too much for one week, so He gave us a break. The dishwasher hasn't leaked since Sunday!)

So yesterday was shopping for a washing machine day. I felt like Jonathon did after spending all day car shopping. I had looked at a lot of machines, called a lot of places and read a lot of reviews. Late last night we finally settled on a Maytag. Consumer reports gave it a "best buy" label, and, more importantly, the user reviews were much higher than any of the other ones in our price range. Our one big difference this time, (because our old machine was just as well researched...) is that we bought the 4 year extended warranty. A total of 5 years. That pretty much guaranties us that it will run great for the next 5 years and 2 months. The not so funny ending to this story is that the machine has to be ordered and delivered. Apparently no one keeps a lot of inventory of washing machines. 7 more days without a washing machine. UGH!

That's our "funny" update. Sometimes life is like that. Just like the snow days, sometimes they happen all at once and you think that the sun is never going to come back out. But it does. To be honest, I'm glad all this happened now, while our new little baby is still safely tucked inside me and the kids are in school so that we had the time and energy that it took to take care of all of this. It would have been much less funny (no quotation marks there!) if it had all happened when I had a brand new baby to take care of. Or in the beginning of summer when the brand new baby is here AND the kids are home. Or during one of those ice storms when we were all trapped in the house. You know what I mean...

Here's to an end of "funny-ness." At least for a little while!