I Don't Even Know What to Call This Week

What a week we have had here at Simper headquarters! Sheesh. All I can say is I'm glad that the week is over.

It started with an emotional break down on my part about being unemployed, topped with feeling totally guilty for procrastinating plans for my daughters birthday present. Thanks to Walmart and some very loving grandparents to contribute to her birthday fund, we were able to get her what I think is a pretty good birthday present. (I think she suspects, but I'll leave all of you in suspense until tomorrow.) So that relieved the stress a bit.

Then we had a really interesting turn on Wednesday. The car dealership where we purchased our van 3 years ago called and begged us to come in so they could give us an offer on our car. We just laughed. Now, we had been getting letters from them and other dealerships asking us to come in because of the high demand on our Mazda MPV (they quit making them the year we bought ours.) and we had just been ignoring them. With the phone call we decided we were curious what they would offer for it, so we agreed to amuse them at least that far.

Anyway... we dropped the girls off at a friends house and went to the dealership. The sales people jumped on us like hawks and started fighting over who got our van! (continued laughter.) Later we found out that they had been very short on sales, and the MPV's were sort of like having bait on your lot for more customers because they aren't common anymore. So 1: they wanted us to buy a new car and 2: they wanted to buy our car. We amused them for about an hour while they gave us offer after offer trying to sell us their new Mazda 5 in exchange for our van. We weren't even tempted until we were walking out the door and the salesman began groveling on the floor and pulled so many strings the offer started to look somewhat tempting. Ok, I know what you are all thinking... YOU DON'T HAVE A JOB!! We told them that and ourselves that, but when the deal came out that we wouldn't increase our payment by much, lower our mileage to where we had a new warrenty on a new vehicle AND he started throwing in 4 months of no payments on a car... I have to say we were tempted. We bit the bait. It made so much logical sense for now and in the future I couldn't resist. Judge all you want, it made sense and still makes sense (all except for the not having a job part... hmmm maybe that's why our economy is so in the pits!! They're getting so desperate they are throwing new cars at the unemployed population now!!) Have you ever done something because it made lots of logical sense but sounded completely stupid? That's how we felt. We did it to get out of a very upside down loan and avoid the pending repairs on our van we knew were around the corner. And hey, we got a pretty sweet ride out of the deal!

So 4 hours later, we took our new Mazda 5 home and said goodbye to my van (which I still miss sometimes, and Amelia was pretty upset to let go of. Now she very much likes what we are calling our "batmobile", its not really a van, but its not a car so that's the best we could come up with for her to call it.)

Oh, and did I mention that in the middle of this I had to come home to pick up the girls and in the process locked my keys in the house, which meant I had to break in (which I've been successful doing before.) However this time the window decided it didn't like me... one push and glass flew everywhere. So after a very long day at the dealership we had a mess of glass to clean up and Dallan got to spend the next day repairing a window. Oh, and did I also mention that we completely forgot about a wedding reception we were supposed to attend that evening? Yeah, I think I'll just chalk that whole day up to the pregnancy!!

The rest of the week had accumulating pressure that we were supposed to give talks on Sunday, today. Ugh. I actually decided I'd love preparing talks if it weren't for the fact that all day I'm chasing two pumpkin heads around the house and by the time the house is quiet to where I could think and read, my brain feels like a bowl of mush. So preparation was minimal until yesterday for both of us.

Oh, I forgot one of the most exciting bits of the week! Friday, Dallan was napping on the couch (after all that work I made him do to fix the window, he really deserved it!!) and the phone rang. He had interviewed last Thursday with a company in Utah and they had promised he would hear from them sometime the following week. It was like waiting on pins and needles for that phone call. And Dallan was a champ! I don't think I've ever seen him get that alert after napping that quickly before. The phone call turned into a second phone interview followed by more waiting. The good news is we are fairly certain he did well, and we are fairly certain we can expect another call next week. Do we really want to move to Utah?!? We've sort of always thought about it, but now it seems like a potential reality and I'm kind of nervous to really accept it. But only time will tell. We've learned before not to count chickens before they hatch.

Anyway, if you are still reading... the talks ended up going quite well, the girls were very well behaved for a family in our ward, better for them than for us! I really want to work out a deal with them because I really think we all benefitted from the meeting more today. They weren't screaming, so the congregation got more out of the meeting, we weren't mentally screaming so WE got more out of the meeting and the family they sat with has an 18 year old son who usually sleeps through sacrament meeting and playing with the girls was enough to keep him awake so HE got more technically out of the meeting. See how we all win in this situation. I just wish speaking didn't have to be a part of the equation. And let me just say, having to play the organ AND talk is a less than desirable calling. I felt like I was playing musical chairs! (no pun intended).

And now the day and week is over. And I get to look forward to celebrating a 4 year olds birthday, along with another week of swimming lessons and hopeful of more job news.