Weekly Review July 13 '12

We had a lot going on this week.  On Saturday I went to a baby shower, the missionaries came to dinner, Frank helped do the cooking for a wedding, Scott had to work, and Jared arrived home from scout camp.  Jared had a successful week at camp--he completed all six of the merit badges he had signed up to do.  We are proud of him for working so hard. 

After church on Sunday we had visitors--the McWhirk family from Washington state.  They have been good friends with Frank's family ever since Dean (the dad) served in Brevard while on his mission.  Dean was there several years before I served there, so he and his wife Amber have 3 grown childred now.  Their youngest son was with them and Dean's mom was with them as well.  They came out this way to visit their daughter, who is married now and lives in Maine.  They were nice enough to swing by our place on their way back home.  We had a fun afternoon and evening visiting with them and having dinner together.  They are delightful people.  It is nice to see friends!

Our activities on Monday included trips to the library and  to Costco, along with all our usual Monday chores.  I also made seat cushions for the boys to attach to their buckets for Trek, so that they can use them as seats as well as luggage. 

On Tuesday I took Scott to the dermatologist in the morning and I had book club that afternoon.  I think we ended up discussing other topics more than the actual book, but it was a very interesting discussion anyway.  It's nice to know that other moms have a lot of the same concerns that I do concerning their kids--espcially when it comes to motivation and education.  Tanner went to his friend Ryan's house that afternoon to work out and ended up spending the night there.  He didn't get home until late afternoon on Wednesday.  Scott and Jared went to see the new Spiderman movie; they really enjoyed it. 

I had shopping on Wednesday and I also took Jared to an orthodontist appointment.  My cleaning / organizing project for this week was the closet under the stairs; I got that done on Wednesday too.  I was not happy when I found a dead mouse in one of the boxes--yuck!  (Shudder!!)  Everything is all nicely organized now, at least.  We are missing quite a few camping items that I think we should have.  Maybe they will turn up when I get some other areas of the house cleaned out.  That evening we had YM / YW.  The girls did a fun competition that tested their knowledge of some of the standards in the For Strength of Youth pamphlet.  We had a small group of girls (many seem to be on vacation) but it was still fun.  The boys spent the evening washing folding chairs.  Jared spent the night with his friend Ian that night.

Yesterday I was supposed to have a presidency meeting, but the YW president had been up sick all night so the meeting was postponed.  Frank left for work, but then came back because he couldn't get the door to the gas tank on his car open and he was almost out of gas.  He looked online and figured out a way to fix it, but by then he was supposed to be on the phone for a meeting so he stayed home to do that.  He had two other phone meetings later which didn't give him much time to drive to work in between so he just decided to work from home.  I left to go get groceries and as I was checking out, Frank called to say I needed to get home because Scott had gone to pick up Jared from Ian's house and on the way he wrecked the car.  Scott was just fine, thankfully, but the car was damaged pretty badly.  We got over there as quick as we could.  He had looked down for a few seconds to change the radio and ran into the back of a 15 passenger shuttle van.  The Prius is a little car, so it went right under the bumper of the van and the only damage to the van was a tiny scratch.  The driver of the van was super nice; when we got there he said "I'm so sorry.  I saw him coming and I knew he was going to hit me, but I couldn't get out of the way because there were 3 cars in front of me."  Good heavens, he was apologizing to us!  The world really needs more people like that, don't you think?  He will not be filing a claim and he didn't call the police either--someone else who witnessed the accident must have done that because a trooper did show up.  We had to have the Prius towed and we spent a good hour on the phone with our insurance company before we had all that taken care of.  The policeman was annoyed--he wanted to call the tow truck himself and he said we were "wasting his time".  Well, we just wanted to make sure that we had it done right because we knew our insurance company would cover the cost of the tow.  Here are pictures of our poor little Prius:  

 The dark spot on the ground is leaking antifreeze and oil--our car is "bleeding"! :(

And here's the van that he hit...hmm, not much to see here!

If you look really close, you might be able to see a little scratch on the bumper:

It was obvious from looking at the car that it was going to need some major repairs--both body work and damage to the engine.  (The front passenger side door wouldn't open more than a few inches either.)  Because of that, we were really afraid that the insurance was going to rule the car a total loss.  Did I mention that we only have 3 payments left to make on this car?!  However, we feel so blessed because after the estimate came in today ($5300), the insurance company said they would pay for it to be fixed.  (Less our deductible, which isn't really small but it isn't huge either.)  We are so glad we are not going to have to go car shopping and that we are going to get our little Prius back!  Because we're pretty sure we were not going to be able to afford another Prius.  We got this one used for a good price.  The insurance guy told us that the Prius holds its value a lot better than most other cars, which is probably what saved us.  We will not be getting it back for 2-3 weeks, though.  Thankfully, our insurance also covers the cost of a rental car and we were able to pick it up last night.  It's a Prius, too! :)

We are very thankful that Scott is ok.  We know it could have been so much worse.  If he had been going faster, he probably would have been seriously injured.  The airbags did not deploy because the bumper was nearly untouched.  There are quite a few negative consequences from this accident though--of course.  He was charged with negligent driving so he has to pay a $280 fine and go to a good driver class (which we managed to get set up for tomorrow).  They put 3 points on his license although he may be able to get some of them waived.  I can't imagine how much our insurance premium is going to go up!  But no one is hurt, and we are very grateful for that.

Between one thing and another, we spent a lot of time dealing with the consequences of the accident yesterday, but I still managed to get all my work done.  I was even able to start working on Jared's t-shirt quilt, and we all went outside after dinner and got the lawn mowed and weeding done.  It went pretty fast with everyone helping! Scott went to Institute after that and the other two older boys stayed up watching a movie until he got home. 

Today has also been busy and I feel like I've been interrupted a lot so the day hasn't been as productive as I would have liked.  Scott worked this afternoon and Jared went bowling with some friends.  This evening the 3 older boys are all playing laser tag--there is a special deal on Friday nights that they are taking advantage of.  They went with other friends from the ward too, so they should have fun.

In between everything else this week, I've been working on a lesson (my turn to teach Mia Maids in YW) and reading a book called Tuesdays with Morrie, which is really good so far.  I've been exercising and doing some indexing too. 

Frank had a busy and kind of rough week.  On Sunday evening he started itching all over.  Scott and I had to go out and get him some Benadryl because we didn't have any in the house.  He was still itching in the morning and the medicine made him drowsy so he decided to work from home on Monday.  He went in on Tuesday but started itching again after lunch so he came home early and worked some more from home.  He finally started doing better on Wednesday and was able to make it to work all day.  We don't know what caused it and hope it won't come back.  In the meantime, he also had a client who got a bad virus on his computer so he spent a lot of time on Wednesday night fixing that.  He did monthly maintenance for two clients last night so he has been pretty busy with extra work this week.  I guess that will help pay for the car, though.