The Saturday 7

Busy week! I feel like I have lots to write about!

1. Lucy randomly got sick this week. Monday morning when I got her out of bed to go to work, I thought she felt really warm, but I figured it was just because it was hot in her room. On the way to work, she puked all over herself. Lovely. I took her temperature when we got to Chase and Lyla's house: 101*. Poor girl. My boss couldn't miss work, so I had to stay. And Justin couldn't take the day off to come get Lucy because he used all his sick days for my D&C in January. So we stuck it out at work. She actually did pretty well as long as the Tylenol lasted. Every 4 hours, she started to melt down. She puked one more time at home that night, but was totally fine by Tuesday morning.

2. So the news of the week is that my van died. It's been stalling and acting weird for a while, but on Tuesday it totally died. I was actually at work. I had just dropped Chase off at school and was driving home with Lucy and Lyla, going 55 down 10 Mile Rd., when the speedometer started dropping . . . dropping . . . dropping. Eventually my power steering went out and everything died. It took all my strength just to get the dumb van to the side of the road. I sat there laughing because I was either going to laugh or cry! Haha. Niki came to my rescue and picked us up, and I had the van towed away. We got the call on Thursday that it's beyond repair. :-( Something about the engine being fried, no oil pressure, and the transmission going out. They offered to rebuild the engine for $4500, but the van definitely is not even worth that much (plus it has 200,000 miles on it!), so I guess we're in the market for a new vehicle. The problem is, we have $8 in our savings account and we're up to our eyeballs in debt. Sigh. God will provide, right?

3. Lucy suddenly started calling me "Sadie" this week. I really don't think she's doing it to be naughty or funny. She just thinks that's another name to call me. She hears Chase and Lyla say it a thousand times a day, so just assumes she can say it too. It's actually kind of cute because she says it clear as day. She can't say Niki or Libby or Grandma or Grandpa clearly, but she can sure say "Sadie!"

4. I've pretty much given up on potty training. She's still interested. We still watch Elmo's Potty movie a million times a week, and she'll occasionally ask to wear undies or go potty, but for the most part she's in diapers. Maybe I'll try again in another month or so . . .

5. I hosted a Premier Jewelry party for a friend on Thursday. It was fun hanging out with the girls, eating snacks, and wearing some cute jewelry. And Kristy got me a bunch of pre-sales, so I got $108 in free jewelry! I was never a big jewelry wear-er . . . maybe I will be now!!

6. Speaking of free things, another friend of mine is a sweeper of sorts (you know, like enters every sweepstakes imaginable) and won a bunch of free photo canvasses. She ended up not wanting them all, so passed the code along to me! I got mine this week:

I still need to decide if I'm going to get it framed and find a place for it on the wall, but isn't it adorable? Thanks so much, Amy!!!

7. We closed on our re-finance yesterday. Woohoo! We locked in at an interest rate of 3.625% which is almost 2 points lower than our previous interest rate. It will lower our house payment just over $100 a month. The actual house payment (without the escrow) is now less than what we pay a month in student loans. How depressing is that? And because we're closing just before our summer taxes are due, we rolled in the cost of the new taxes into the loan to cushion our new escrow, and we'll get a check from what we had already built up in our old escrow in the next month or so. Woohoo!

Whew! Congrats for hanging on to the end. We'd appreciate prayer for our stupid van/financial situation. Thanks for all the encouraging words on facebook and in person. We're so grateful to have such a great support system. Love you all. Have a great week!