Our "new to us" car!!!

Last Saturday on the way home from a scout campout, Mike was in a car accident. It was raining, and someone stopped suddenly in front of him. They swerved to the left to miss hitting the car in front of them, and Mike tried to stop before hitting her. The car slid and he hit her on the right side then went off the road into a small grove of trees. Mike and the guy with him were fine, but the car won’t run now. It doesn’t look all that bad, but its innards aren’t good anymore. Haha

We spent most of Saturday afternoon thru the evening looking up cars on craigslist and autotrader.com. We decided on our budget of $3500 (we could go a little over if absolutely necessary, but it would make it uncomfortable to live for a few months). Thank heavens we hadn’t spent our income tax money yet like we were going to do. :) Then while sitting at home Sunday night, we got a big knock on the door. Actually, it was more of a banging on the door. :) We went to see who it was and all we found was an envelope taped to the door with cash inside. It took our breaths away. Never in a million years would we think something like that would happen to us. Mike thinks it was the young men’s presidency who took up a collection for us. I don’t know. I’m just thankful. It was to be the first instance of Heavenly Father letting us know he was aware of our struggles.

Then Monday, Mike took off work so we could go find a vehicle. We had found a few Winstars that were about the same year as our wrecked van. He thought we could take parts and pieces off the wrecked van and used them on anything we bought. :) Apparently, this was not to be. We did a lot of driving Monday, but found vans that needed more work than we had the money to fix. For such a small budget, we didn’t have many leads. Then we were checking out a van south of Dallas. It ended up being a dud as well, but another vehicle caught our eye. They had a green Dodge caravan for $1799. We looked in it and it was spotless. Someone had really taken good care of this car. We had just talked ourselves into looking somewhere else when the salesman walked up. We took the van for a test drive and it ran really good. We ended up paying $2000 for the caravan (tax, title, license, everything).

It isn’t much to look at. It’s a 1995 and it’s been around the block a few times. The hood and roof are a different color than the sides. But, it’s a really nice, running, we don’t have to do anything to it, completely paid for car. The girls absolutely love it. They got upset this morning that Mike took it to work. “Why did daddy take the good car” is what I heard from Emma when she saw she had to ride to school in the blue car. The manual windows are her favorite part of the car. It’s funny to see how something I see as an inconvenience is her favorite part! Haha