The wreck...the car or me?

Oh man it's been a long time ago that this all happened, but it is what brings us to the present so I thought I better share my bittersweet story.

So in 2001 when I graduated with my RN from Rick's College's last nursing class, I got my first real job and started to work.  In August of that year, I decided that it was time to buy my own vehicle.  The first I had ever bought.   I never dreamed that I'd buy a brand new car, but I found a great deal on a nice car and couldn't resist.  So I splurged and bought it, thinking I'll never get this lucky.  I might as well spoil myself now cause I won't get to later with a family.  So I bought my dream car.  A brand new Honda Accord.  It was a peppy 4 cylinder auto with leather and a sunroof, and can I say, got great gas mileage.  I'll have to look for the picture that I have the morning that I took it home.  I really looked awful, cause I worked the previous 12 hour night shift at EIRMC, but never the less, I was pretty excited.  So over the years I have come to be quite attached to my car and Chad teases me about my "Supreme vehicle".  Okay I really did call it that...I know cheesy, but I really loved it.

Well my mom and dad came over Conference weekend and stayed to help watch Kherrington while I worked.  My dad has really gotten into fishing the last several years.  So on the first trip to Pullman, he took us down to the locks and the dam near Boyer park.  It was a nice little drive, but I can't remember why we couldn't really see it.  The timing wasn't right is all that I remember.  But since then he'd gone down there and got the meet the fish counters.  There is a big observation window that people sit and count fish to get numbers.  I guess it's a fish and game thing, anyway, my dad wanted to take my mom to see it.  And on their way back to our house on Friday, October 2nd, my dad got in a collision in my car at highway 195 and Wawawaii Rd.  Not even 5 miles away from our house.   We were lucky though.  No one was hurt and the person just took off my back bumper as my dad was trying to cross the highway.

Yeah so my bumper is in the scrap yard above.  I took it to Myer's Autobody and rebuild.  (Which I strongly suggest if someone needs work done on a car in Pullman.  We've used them for a few things, all things that have happened to Chad's car and none of those were our fault).  And when Steve was doing the evaluation he told be that I shouldn't be driving the car, which I hadn't been, just to the repair place from my house. Well turns out that the entire rear end of my car had been shifted to the left and it even bent the frame.  Several days later I found out that my car was totaled. :(  You can imagine that I was devastated.  I even cried when Chad took me to gather all my personal things out of the car.  I know stupid!  It's just a car.  I  had to keep telling myself that.  But as Chad put it, "It was more than just a car to you."

Here you can see the gap when the trunk was closed.

  So we really ended up finding out that it was totaled while we were in SE Idaho for Chad's rotation in Blackfoot.  Some of you know that I always said that my next vehicle would be a Honda Pilot. I had been debating buying one before we even had Kherrington.  I had done lots of researching on them and other mid sized SUV's and I decided that it would be the perfect family car, so that I wouldn't have to be a mini van mom.  To all those mini van moms out there, I have an aunt that swears by them, and I can see some advantages to them, but overall, I wanted something 4 wheel drive.  So then Chad and I were stressing about finding another vehicle, cause we've been lucky enough to each have come to our marriage with a vehicle all paid off.  I know we're lucky.  And we decided that the running around was pretty annoying.  I admire all you that do it.

Well we did test drive a 2007 Pilot, but it had 75,000 miles.  We loved how it drove, but didn't like the color so much.   It's called Aberdeen Green.  It was starting to grow on me, but Chad was not budging.  Which was a good thing it had too many miles.  So we continued our search.....only to find very few used Pilots for sale that were anywhere close to SE Idaho or Spokane.

We were really starting to worry, but it all worked out.  My parent's had been looking for another Accord and found a really nice one.  And the nicest thing was.....They let us take it with us to use as our vehicle until we could find a Pilot with what we needed. The other thing is that they paid for our deductible, which we had full coverage on our vehicle do to my laziness of changing it.  Thank Heavens So this is what we brought back to Pullman with us.

Now this isn't the actual one, but it looked just like it.  Charcoal Gray, almost black with nice dark tinted windows (Nice thing to have when one is pumping breast milk on a trip to and from Idaho) .  It is an EX, so it had the sunroof, and it had gray interior, which is my favorite, but my Mom isn't a huge leather fan and this one had cloth interior.  It even had a place to plug your ipod into it. I also loved all the cup holders. 4 just for the front seats.  It came in handy for traveling.  We really enjoyed this car.  But when we came back down to SE Idaho I got a call from Al Vaalemoen from Smith's asking if we'd bought a Pilot yet, cause he had one to show us.  So we went and test drove another 2007 Pilot with only 28,000 miles, tow package, heated front seats, defrosters for the side mirrors, seats for 8, and a DVD player!!  Oh yes my friends, everything that I would put on my dream Pilot!!  And that day we drove home in our new/used Pilot.

Okay so this sounds all wonderful, but while we were negotiating, I ended up in tears, cause I was so afraid I'd just signed something that would push us out of our budget.  Yeah I was totally bawling, tears coming down the cheeks and everything.  I really have enjoyed my time staying home with Kherrington and I didn't want to have to put in more hours at work because we bought another vehicle.  This was the entire reason I had thought about buying the vehicle before we had her.  So I could get it paid off sooner without leaving a little one at a babysitters.  But I do appreciate Al for keeping us in mind and getting us everything that we wanted.  I do have to give it to him for that.

Not actually a picture of ours, but looks just like it!!

So even though it doesn't get the gas mileage it states 23-25 mpg, it does get 20 and that's not bad for the SUV's of this size.  And we're loving it!!

Johnny Jumper

Since we came back from being in Idaho, we borrowed Grandma Joos' Johnny jumper.  Oh man does this little girl love thing.  Below is a video of her showing off for Grandpa Joos, when he and Grandma Joos were up for a visit last week..  Sorry for the sound effects, but every time I see it I have to make that sound.  I swear she's going to be a dancer just from this video.

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We sure enjoyed having my parent's here with us, and big thanks to Grandma Joos that saves our bacon (and money) and comes to watch Kherrington while I worked several day over a week stretch!!!

Kherrington 6 month check-up

So on Jan 7th, Kherrington had her 6 month check-up and is still doing great.
I just can't believe that she's 6 months old.  She did great with her immunizations again. YEAH!!

So here's her stats:

Ht: 26 inches    (57%)

Wt: 15 lbs 9.5oz (40%)

    Head Circumference: 43 cm        (64%)

She's accomplishing so many stepping stones in her development.  It's really exciting to sit and watch her grow.  It really amazes me.
 So some things that I've noticed just recently, is her attention to detail. She's starting to focus on small things that I'm surprised she even sees.  Like a blonde piece of my bangs that is hanging down in front of my eyes, so she starts to try to hold it using her thumb and forefinger, but ends up using her fist.  Then you watcher her try to pick up other small things with the same 2 fingers.  Not that she's overly capable with them yet.  I just love to see her try.  She is noticing strings, so when I have a sweatshirt on...the hoody tie is what catches her attention.
Just this last week she has started rolling from her back to her right side...Something that she hasn't done much up until this time. So now I see her do it all the time.  I used to like to put her in her crib to sleep so her left side was right against the crib pad.  Just so she couldn't turn over and just play on her stomach.  I know, I'm a mean mother, but it was helpful for a little while.  Now I find her and she's rolled to her right side over and over again until she's against the other side of the crib.
So now she can roll from her back and stomach both directions.  She's also starting to  propel herself forward a little, trying to reach for things that she's moved away from.  Every once in a while I'll catch her and she'll have one knee under herself.  It's only a matter of time before she'll be crawling.  She already move backwards by pushing herself and then she'll turn a 360 on her stomach to change directions or things she's playing with.
Chad and I are so in love with this girl, and can't believe we're so lucky to have her in our family!

UHHH Finances!!

So I've been reading some blogs this morning and it has inspired me to write about a few things this morning. First of all the last several weeks, I have been obsessing or preoccupied over finances. There are a few reasons for this:
1) I didn't quite calculate the payments all that great when we did lump bills in the Fall with Chad's school loans. (I know horrible, but I figure it's the best use of the left over loans than we ever used. I get to stay home with Kherrington more because of it.)So over the past month, in December of all months, I had bills coming in that I hadn't had to pay the last several months. Thank heaven they were greatly smaller than a normal monthly bill though.
2)We made a crazy(but we felt inspired) choice to buy the vehicle of our(Well... MY)dreams. You'll have to see the post before this to appreciate all that entailed, with the car wreck etc.
3)It's a start to a new semester, so therefore new student loans and bills to pay...
4)Having talked to my brother Derek over Christmas about an awesome series of classes that they are offering over the next several months to a year to help their ward become financially healthy!! And having him suggest a program. Which I will boast about in a bit.
5)We have also made the decision for me to go PRN (as needed) at Pullman Regional, so that Kherrington and I can go with Chad down to SE Idaho for the months of February and March. This has scared me a great deal, but I think that the Clinical Integration has enough work for me to do from Idaho that we'll be okay financially.
6)Last but not least, we have a cute house to sell(that we decided we'll really miss) but don't want to try the 2 house owner thing again....It makes me into someone I don't like to be..

So with the use of MINT.com, I've finally been able to see how our own financial health is.  I have a place that will pull over the money from my investment funds from Pullman and EIRMC, my house loan, bank accounts, our expenditures and income, and I have to unfortunately manually add in Chad's student loans at present.:(  the one bad side, but at least you can manually add things that they don't have access to.  I would suggest everyone at least give it a look and play just a little bit and you'd be suprised.  It also gives you ways that you can save more money with different investors, banks, CD, Loans, Credit cards, etc.  Not that you have to do any of that.    All I can say is that I love it.  And for once, I can sort of see if our decisions to take out the student loans to pay for school and buy a house instead of paying rent was worth while.  And I think it has been a great decision in the long run!  YEAH!!  I love when that all works out




So that makes me feel better about buying the house.  We have been totally spoiled to have our own place/space to be able to start our family, even though putting in all those retaining walls and landscaping was a back breaker.  We'll be sad to leave the wonderful memories that we've made here, along with our AMAZING neighbors.  I wish I could pack them up with us and take them where ever we end up....Which is a whole other post in its self.  But the end of this school year is sneaking up on me, and I have so much I need to get done in that time!!