We always have a story to tell after a trip out of town.  This time is no exception.

We traveled down to Paul's home town to say good-bye to Paul's friend, Henrik, who passed away last weekend after a long struggle with a brain tumor.  The funeral went well given the untimely death.

We had experienced some difficulty with our van right before our trip.  We took it in and had it repaired and ready to go.  On the way to our destination, however, we had increasing car troubles.  The van kept stalling at red lights and was driving rough.  My only prayer was that we could make it into Pittsburg safely.  My poor stomach was in knots the entire ride down (the kids were not behaving very well in addition to the van woes).  God answered my prayers and I was glad of that.  The bad news was that it looked like our transmission had gone out.  We couldn't drive it one mile more.  The cost to rebuild the transmission was not worth the cost of the vehicle.

After the funeral we immediately went looking for a new ride.  We ended up having the van towed during the night to the car dealer where we spotted a Suburban we liked.  We thought it would look bad having the van towed in broad daylight.

To make a very long story short, we ended up purchasing the Suburban after much dickering with the "pesky" car salesman, countless calls to other dealers in the area, and a trip to another dealer to check out a different vehicle.  The salesmen had us and they knew it.  Oh well, I guess they did us a favor by taking the van off of our hands.

The trip back was much more enjoyable.  The kids had more room so we were able to switch up seating arrangements.  We actually were able to laugh about our adventure.  Twenty years from now it will be a great family story.

Many thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law who watched the kids for us while we were trying to make quick decisions.  Without her help it would have been a much more difficult situation.

So now we are proud owners of a gas hungry Suburban with tons of space and no doubt will make mince meat out of any deer that tries to get in our path!  I can just feel my carbon footprint growing bigger by the minute!