Let's start with the interesting stuff, shall we?
We decided to go to the annual Soups and Sweaters Beal gathering at Gabe's house for his birthday. Everyone brings a soup to share even though what we all want is Christy's famous buffalo chicken soup amiright? As the weekend got closer, we had been keeping a keen eye out for a pickup truck and found one that we wanted to buy. We wanted to buy it so much in fact, I almost convinced Alex to go look at it for me and buy it before someone else snatched it up! But in his wisdom we waited for the weekend. We left Saturday afternoon at 1:00 to give us plenty of time to take a look at the truck, buy it if we liked what we saw, and get to Gabe's by 5:00.
Well we got to Crater's and I passed a car (mind you, it's Crater's, so, you gotta zip around 'em... you know?) and after that we started to hear a slight...something noise. So we stopped in Carey to check the oil and sure enough, it was very low (strange, we had just changed the oil in July) so we topped that off and continued on. Justin fell asleep at this point, and as we continued on I could hear a distinct rattle sound getting louder. It woke Justin up right before Shoshone so we pulled over to decide what to do. Nothing was open in Shoshone to do any kind of car repair, so we looked to Twin Falls for options. We drove the last 25 miles to the only autoshop open for a good 100+ mile radius just before closing time. Brent the mechanic had me turn the car on and as soon as it came to life the rattle sound was SO loud! He shook his head that it was not good and the prognosis was the engine was done-zo. The engine blew a rod. While Justin was inside the shop talking with him, I was with the kids looking up minivans for sale on craigslist and facebook marketplace. The plan was to buy a truck but now we were in the market for a whole new car! He told us our best bet was to go to the airport and rent a car. However, they were about to close and he was confident our car wouldn't even make it the last 6 miles there! So he offered to drive us in his truck. Bless that man!
By the time we had our rental and were on the road to Boise, I had looked at lots of car options in Twin and Boise. I was seeing a lot of listings around 2007-2010 with 150,000+ miles on them. No thanks. The Pacifica had 135,000 miles on it and was dead so I didn't want to risk it. Up to this point we were saying many prayers just to make it to the car repair shop, and now we were praying to find a miracle minivan in the next day or so. After everything, this debacle ended up being a tremendous blessing to us which I'll get to, but let me tell you something... I believe in the blessings of tithing. Honestly, paying tithing is hard sometimes. D'you know why? If I could invest that money instead of paying tithing every month, I'd be a multi-millionaire at retirement. Finding an extra 10-15% after already giving 10%... anyway... sometimes it feels hard. But I've always paid tithing and fast offerings the very first thing I do. I do it because of how I was raised and because I truly believe in this principle. Even in college I would pay tithing on my scholarships and grants. So as we drove to Boise I prayed that Heavenly Father would bless us to find something that would benefit our family, and most importantly that we would make a wise decision with the options we had. Normally I like to take my time with a big decision like this but time wasn't on our side under these circumstances. I set up three vans to look at the next day.
We stayed at an AirBNB that night and I had crazy insomnia (I never can't sleep). At 3:00 I had the thought that we should return the car to the airport there in Boise instead of taking it back to Twin (the lady at the Twin airport was adamant we bring it back to Twin the next day...). I called them first thing and made the arrangements. We went to Gabe and Christy's in the morning so the kids could have a place to play while we car shopped. Gabe and Christy were so generous to just let us come over and hang out while we figured everything out. Emmett and Logan were thrilled to go back and play with cousins and their house has an amazing stash of dinosaurs. We went to look at the first car which was my favorite to begin with, and it was in the price range where we could actually get the truck too if we wanted. The trouble was paying for the thing. Most people want cash or a cashier's check but those are two things you can't get on a Sunday so I was praying that this car could work out and that she'd take venmo. We liked it and told her we'd take it and that I could probably get a money order or buy a cashier's check somewhere nearby unless she'd be willing to take venmo by chance...and she said venmo was fine! Hallelujah!! Oh my word - I can't tell you how much stress this took out of things! I was worried we wouldn't be able to get a money order/cashier's check and we'd have to stay an extra night just to get to the bank in the morning. The car has 100,000 miles on it, is a 2011, and we got it for a steal! She was only selling it because they were moving to Garden Valley (so their kids don't have to do online school) and she needed something with four-wheel drive. Amazing. She said she was surprised we asked about it so quickly because she said she had just gotten it back from the detail clean job on it and I had messaged her pretty much right after she listed it. We paid less money for it than the cost would be to fix the Pacifica.
Another reason this all worked out marvelously was I've been thinking about how big of a pain that Pacifica was going to be with more than two kids. It had been on my mind but I figured we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Another thing is we usually go through Fairfield to get to Boise, but we both felt better about going through Shoshone. If we had gone through Fairfield per usual, we would have been stranded somwhere right around Fairfield and I mean STRANDED. No car, no rental, no hotel, no nuthin. Probably no tow job either, at least not right away. Because we went through Shoshone, we were able to change course to Twin right as the Chrystler died its dying breath and get help from The Good Samarian Brent who got us to a car rental in the nick of time. All of this to get an amazing deal on a car that will serve us SO much better...and the transaction was a snap! I'm telling you! Heavenly Father had a plan for us I have no doubt. It just worked out so well.
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