I can't be creative with these titles - they all say weird week!

So this week, we had a bunch of interesting things happen. We had more snow, just to remind us it's still winter, and the kids had a few days of snow route buses. We had a lovely time sliding near our house and not being able to stop until the last minute.

Eric was sick on Wednesday and missed school. He's had a lovely cough that shows up mostly at night, but we hope it's almost gone.

On Thursday I had to drive down to airport to bring Reid his forgotten wallet so he could get on the plane at 8:30 am (we left the house at 6:55 and still made it). Kim and Abby got themselves ready for school and even made their own lunches. It's amazing what necessity will do!

That same day I went to kindergarten orientation and had a sitter because Reid was gone. On the way home I stopped at the atm to get money to pay the sitter. It was out of money (luckily I had some at home) and when I got into the van, it wouldn't start. No cranking or anything. It didn't seem like the battery since I had just driven it and I had to get the sitter home - couldn't wait 2 hours for roadside assistance. I called the sitter's mom and she came and brought me home and took her daughter.

So now the van is parked a 15 minute drive away and I need to get back to it to see what we should do. Eric, Jessica, and I were ready to take the bus (single route and the transit center is across the street from the van) but a guy from the ward saw us waiting and took us to the car. He actually does bodywork on cars for a living and know quite a bit about them. He had a jump box in his van and had it ready to go. I put the key in and the van started immediately - without a jump.

Now I'm feeling ridiculous, but I know the van wasn't going to start the night before. As I'm driving away, I notice the check engine light on so I decided to drive it to the Kia dealership to get it fixed. As we were waiting for them to take it from the front drive to the garage to look at it, I noticed the guy having trouble starting it. For once, the car actually acted up for the repairman! They got it to the garage and after a couple of hours of looking at it, testing parts, etc... they decided that the crank sensor was out and the starter was on its way out. Of course, they didn't have either part on hand and one of them wouldn't be in until Wednesday - this all happened on Friday.

I obviously needed a vehicle and the guy was feeling bad for not having the parts, etc... so they let us take their shuttle van (a newer Kia Sedona) until the van was done. I was ready to rent a car, but it's a lot cheaper to get the free one from the dealership! Anyway, the kids LOVE the "new" one. It has lots of buttons to push and a dvd player that we can't get the sound to work on. In fact, we would love to just let them keep our old one and we'll just keep this one :).

I feel very grateful that the Lord was looking out for us, placed help in our path, and helped us find a way to make it all work out. I don't usually ask for help and this forced me to do just that. There seems to be a positive in every difficult situation!