Car Trouble

   Devon couldn't find his school computer and was sure he left it in the car so I told him to go look. He came back in a while later and said that he couldn't get the windows up. The Nissan Quest has this feature if you leave the keys in the lock for too long the windows roll down. So I went to fix it and found the car unresponsive. I figured it was the battery so I tried to jump it. No dice. Daniel tried to jump it when he got home with similar results. 

    The next few days we tried different things, but it was just dead. Nothing was working. It was a real puzzle. Daniel was able to get the windows up by powering them directly, but no further headway was made. We had been discussing getting rid of it anyway because it won't fit us all in a few months. I guess this was the sign to get that done sooner rather than later.  

    Then a few weeks later the blue car that Daniel uses to commute was shaking something fierce and we decided to take it in before it got worse. The very next day Daniel was on his way to work when the big van threw a sparkplug and he limped it back to the shop. He walked home and shocked me, it was 5 am. He was really frustrated about not having a working vehicle, but luckily, other than having to take the day off of work, it wasn't a real inconvenience. 

     In fact, we got the van back that afternoon! The mechanic was surprised because a thrown spark plug usually leads to an engine fire. Daniel was very lucky and I know he was protected. It should have destroyed the engine. We were able to get the other car fixed by the next day so we're back in business and only $800 dollars out of pocket. I think we got off easy. It did put a fire under us though and we started the process of purchasing a new car. 

Getting Settled

    Charles has wanted to expand his palate. He has been asking for months for seafood. A while ago he realized that he likes salmon, all the kids do except Devon. Now he was interested in mussels. I got a real good seafood mix from Costco and we had a few different dishes. I started with paella because it's one of my favorites, but I didn't get a picture. Next we tried a cream sauce over noodles.

This one was a garlic soup, I really liked it.

He seemed to enjoy them, not so much the mussels, he really liked the calamari though.

We made our own plates of metal for Come Follow me.

Lizzy has been decorating the pavement.

We got the kids some play equipment for Christmas. A trampoline and play structure. The neighbor boys have really appreciated them. 

   We ordered a huge table from an Amish furniture place. It extends to seat 20 comfortably. We have a combination of chairs and benches, unfortunately, when it arrived, the table legs were nowhere to be found. The poor delivery man was baffled. So Daniel put the benches together to look like a table. This didn't last though, we had already moved our old table downstairs, it's the game table now, so Daniel brought up our folding tables to use until our real table could be set up. We were missing 2 leaves for the table too. The delivery man said this was the biggest table he's ever delivered. They had to come back twice with the missing parts. 

  A bigger house means more furniture, we got this couch to have more seating upstairs. I still need to figure out what to do downstairs.  I was excited to find this rug too, it matches everything perfectly.

Fighting the snow with a water gun.

We got a rug to brighten up the downstairs. Henry likes jumping into a pile of blankets down there.

   My craft room is coming along. I got this giant drip pan that Daniel attached to the wall so the kids can draw and display art. Henry really likes to use the dry erase markers, I really like how it keeps him busy.

 

A New Year

 About 15 mins from our house is this war memorial. It's a Stonehenge replica. We took a Saturday to visit it. When we got there our missionaries were filming a special for their FaceBook page. That was fun.

My good-looking boys!

We celebrated Dia de Los Reyes on the 6th. My king cake is really white bread with a honey butter center. The kids love it. 

December

A sweet sister in our ward invited us over to decorate cookies. Her kids are mostly gone, her youngest is a senior in high school, and she misses doing things with little kids.

Christmas!

The Martins got us 24 pairs of socks. we had a bast playing with them.

Henry is quite the helper, he loves to be involved in everything.