We Finally Bought A Van

Yesterday was a momentous day for our vehicles...

In the afternoon my beloved Neon hit 100,000 miles (I've had it for 8 years next month).

Then we traded in our old 1996 Jeep (the dealer only wanted to give us $1,000 for it but I told them we needed $2,000 or no deal).

Then we bought a new (to us) van! Woohoo!

That, my friends, is a bargain of a van. It's a 2008 Kia Sedona with just under 36,000 miles on it and the sticker price was just $12,980. I knew vans for that price could be found, thanks to a handy dandy spreadsheet I made while researching vans, but I also knew that price would be hard to come by. When I saw one listed for that online Tuesday afternoon we jumped on it. 

I'm glad the years (2.5) of longing for a van are finally over. I'm glad the weeks (2.5) of van research are finally over. And I'm glad the months (6) of spending mass amounts of money on the Jeep are over!

The boys checking out the van at the dealership.

Yesterday I lowered my March for Babies goal to $500. Then I hit $500, so I raised it to $600. Today I checked and I am right at $600, so of course I feel the need to raise it to $700! Have you donated to help give babies a healthy start to life?

 

Living Like No One Else

I love Dave Ramsey. He's opened my eyes to how much debt hurts your long-term financial future and he's opened my eyes to how quickly you can get out of debt with some determination.

When Nick and I got married we had about $1,000 in CC debt between us, which really isn't that bad considering how high the national average is per person. We also each had a car loan and each had a student loan. We did work hard to pay down the CC fast, but it never dawned on us to try to pay down the other loans early. That is, until I read Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness After reading the book I was suddenly inspired to have us dump our remaining debt (just one car payment and 2 student loans at this point). It took me a while to get Nick convinced, but eventually it happened.



First we paid off the rest of the car (my Neon), then we started chipping away at the student loans. Mine was the smaller of the two, so we worked on mine first. We finally paid it all off last fall - 4 years early! Then we started working on Nick's student loan. We had some set backs along the way when various large car repairs came up, but last week Nick paid off the remainder of the loan using a big chunk of our tax refund. WOOHOO! We're (almost) Debt Free! Now all we have left is our mortgage (which we just refinanced to a lower interest rate, saving us $100 a month).

Last week we also were dealt another financial blow by the Jeep. We've been saying for months and months that we're going to get rid of it and finally buy a minivan, but it took longer to pay off the student loans than we had hoped. We spent $900 on that Jeep in February and when the check engine light came on again a couple of weeks ago and we were told it would be another $500-$800 to fix we said "enough!". Nick and I had a financial pow-wow and came up with a plan.

Dave Ramsey talks about living like no one else now so that you can really live like no one else later. The last thing a newly out of debt family wants to do is run to the nearest bank and take out a several thousand dollar loan for a car. So we're going to live like no one else. We've become a one car family. Yep. We've slapped a for sale sign on the Jeep (and have had 3 people look at it in the last 4 days) and are making due with just the Neon. Good thing we bought the narrowest car seats on the market and can fit all three in the back seat!

The grand plan? Sell the Jeep (it'll make a great car for someone, we just don't want to keep spending money on a car that is too small for us) and do some serious saving in the next 2 months. We have a target date of June 1st; by that day we want to have purchased a van either totally for cash or pretty darn close to it. If we have to borrow a thousand or two, it's not the end of the world. We'd be able to pay that down completely in a matter of a few months.

Who'd of guessed our new "family car" would be a tiny, yellow Dodge Neon? Not me! But I'm willing to live like no one else right now so that we can live like no one else later!

March for Babies update: Two friends have stepped forward and committed to walking with team Three Cuties, so we're back up to 6 walkers! Yay!! Now to just chip away at that lofty fund-raising goal I have...
 

3 Hours of "Fun"

Yesterday between the hours of 10:30 and 1:30 was, um, "fun". For the last week the boys have had nasty colds. Last Friday night in fact I ended up taking Tyler to our doctor's walk in clinic because he had runny nose, bad cough and had just spiked a fever of 102.5. Turned out he had an ear infection in one of his ears. Whew! Dodged the H1N1 bullet there! (They've only had dose one of that shot, so aren't fully protected yet.)

Fast forward to Wednesday and Jackson and Chase are still miserable, aren't sleeping well because of the coughing at night and now are increasingly irritable. It was then that I decided they might have ear infections too (my kids don't often run fevers when they have one, so sometimes it's hard to tell). So I called the doctor's office and set an appointment for the next morning (and was also able to move Tyler's weight check and ear infection follow up appointment to that day to save myself an extra trip).

Usually Nick is able to meet me for these appointments, even the last minute ones, but yesterday he had meetings all day and just couldn't pull himself away. We got to the office on time, the boys were SO well behaved. No one protested getting on the scale (sometimes they do), they climbed in and out of the Choo Choo when I asked them too, they didn't turn the computer off in the exam room (yep, they've done that before) and then they didn't protest when I told them they couldn't have their lollipops until we got to the car. They all calmly walked from the Choo Choo into the lobby bathroom, all used the potty AND didn't go crazy touching everything in the bathroom.

Oh and before I continue - the health part? Tyler's ear infection was not better, in fact he now had one in both ears, so he's on a different antibiotic now. Chase had ear infections in both ears as well and Jackson had one in only one ear. The really excellent news of the day though? Tyler is gaining weight again! WOO! He gained a pound and a half in the last 6 weeks and is now up to the 25th percentile instead of hovering between the 10th and 15th. The doctor is very pleased with his progress.

Ok, so after such a successful solo trip to the doctor I marched out of that place with my head high. I loaded the boys into the car, gave them all their lollipops and went to the back of the car to open the hatch so I could put the Choo Choo in. Here's where things went south.

The hatch refused to open! All the jiggling, locking and unlocking and kicking in the world would not open the hatch. I finally had to release two very sticky  boys from their car seats and have them sit in the front (which resulted in very sticky controls, doors and steering wheel) while I removed two car seats, folded down half of the back seat and shoved the Choo Choo into the back that way. Awesome. Then I put the car seats back, wrangled my sticky boys back into their seats (during which they added stickiness to my leather coat) and headed for Target.

By the time we reached Target (to get their prescriptions) it was 12:15. 45 minutes past lunch and now 15 minutes past when they usually go down for a nap. After dropping off stuff at the pharmacy I wheeled our very full cart (of kids, not food) to the "cafe" and ordered some not-so-great chicken tenders to share.

Finally, 3 hours, a broken Jeep and $100 later (yep, that's how much antibiotic for 5 days for 3 kids runs ya) we were home and finally going down for nap time.

I sat at the table and down a Diet Coke and life was good again.

So sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I think my camera is dying a slow death. Don't worry though - I'm working on a remedy! 

Cans for Comments is up to 52 comments! Tomorrow is the last day - let's finish strong! Don't forget to visit the other blogs that are participating too - comment there and help folks all over the country! 

Video Clip of the Week - Car Jam

As promised on Monday, here is the hilarious video my sister took of the boys on the way to the Crown Center Fountains!

Thursday evening I put together a "Boys" play list on my Ipod. I figured the boys might enjoy listening to some of "their" music (Go Fish, Rob Biagi, Phil Joel, etc) in the car! Typically we listen to K-Love which they seem to enjoy enough but they love it when we play their music in the house, so why not the car?

Turns out they LOVE listening to their favorite songs in the car!

(Song playing is Superstar by Go Fish.)



Now at the mere mention of riding in the car Jackson gets excited and starts "na na-ing" while Tyler runs around, dances and says "go, go, stop" (one of the favorite songs is "Before, I go, go, go, I stop) and Chase just plain gets excited.

Did I mention the fighting has stopped since introducing the music last Friday? Good thing too considering we've now moved the boys to the little Neon (AC is broken in the Jeep and that's not good when it's 100 degrees outside)!