As you know we’ve been looking at vans as of late. With baby #3 arriving in February we needed to keep our eyes open for that perfect deal. We had looked at the Dodge Grand Caravan’s. Two different ones, Canada Value Package and the Stow-n-go. The only thing we didn’t like about the CVPackage was no rear air or tinted windows. The only thing about the SXT (stow-n-go) package was the price.
We met with our financial adviser and discovered we are doing better than we thought and could afford a bit better van (or bit more money). So we looked and discovered the two ‘best’ vans out there are the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. The Honda starts above our budget, so we thought we’d go look at the Toyota. Their websites suck! I like the Dodge one, it shows every van they have in stock, and in transit. And all the different prices, features etc for each van. You can basically shop online, the Toyota and Honda websites aren’t anything in comparison.
Come today… Saturday. We decided it would be a good day to test drive the Toyota (and go look at it for the first time). We dropped the girls off at Grandma and Grandpa’s house at 10:30am. Once at the Toyota dealership a sales lady came out and showed us the van ‘she would want’. uh huh… Rear video, power sliding doors, 8 passenger, you name it, it had it! Yeah, we didn’t even ask the price on that one and asked to see a ‘base’ model. She didn’t have one as low of price as it showed online, however had one similar. We took it for a test drive. Very nice. Very. But once back at the office, the price…..well…. Lets just so not so nice. Once everything was totaled it blew our budget out of the water!!
It was only 20minutes to 12. “Want to go test drive a Dodge again?” Orlund asked. I figured might as well while we have the Toyota fresh in our minds….
Arrive at the Dodge dealer. (opposite side of town so like a 20minute drive). A sales guy comes out and we ask for our sales guy (I’ll call him John for the purpose of it’s easier than calling him ‘the sales guy’ LOL). Orlund mentioned before the sales guy went to get John that we had looked at a Toyota. A few minutes later John came out. I have to say he didn’t look all too impressed. But he started to tell us about the different features, prices etc again, and said they’d just got some new ones in so we started to walk over to look at them. He then mentioned while motioning to a red minivan, that it had just been traded in as the owners were upgrading. it had 67000Km’s on it (the price was under $20,000). It still sounded like an okay deal but he kept telling us about it. I couldn’t figure out why he was so excited about this red van. He then re-told us the information… No it didn’t have 67000Km’s it had 6100Km’s!!!!! GAME CHANGER! It was a 2010 Canada Value Package however with rear tinted windows. The papers were still being signed to hand it over, so we couldn’t even unlock the doors to look. We asked him to check the price with his boss. It was an AMAZING price. We said YES!
We went for lunch (to give them time to transfer the van over to the dealer). Came back and signed the papers…. we might have been silly but we didn’t get to look inside it (unlocked as in) until we were waiting for the insurance guy to come!! Our first test drive was driving it off the lot!!! CRAZY! I know! But even including taxes it didn’t come to $20,000 !! How could we pass it up! I guess another sales guy was taking photo’s while we were away at lunch and sending them to one of his clients trying to get them to buy it before us!! But we got it!!! So now I have a beautiful Red minivan in my driveway I couldn’t be happier….Okay I could… read on to find out….

After our purchase, which got us picking up our kids at 3pm. I was ill, I hadn’t planned to be out so long so hadn’t taken my Diclectin (anti-morning sickness pill). So when we got home I laid on the couch while the girls played around me. I awoke to find Joy sitting on the potty yelling she was done, no Orlund to be seen and an Olivia poking at me… Guess I was worn out! So after helping Joy I peaked out the window as Orlund was supposed to show his Civic to a guy at 5pm. I saw him out there showing the guy (I looked out our bathroom window). Then I came back to the living room and in a few minutes watched through the front window and Orlund and this guy took the car for a test drive…… But the guy stopped before even fully backing out. I was wondering why when I noticed that he’d backed into his own car!!! Yup broke our tail light and dented our bumper, he broke his side mirror (driver) and dented the middle of the drivers door!! He’s paying for repairs but not buying the car….him buying would have made me happy… THEN…..
(and John said we were so lucky we should have got a lottery ticket) ~ Orlund was cooking Chicken on the BBQ. I noticed a funny smell. So Orlund took a look outside… sure enough the BBQ was on fire again! He had to push the flaming BBQ away from the house as much as possible (its on our small upstairs deck), there is smoke damage to the side, which with any luck we will be able to scrub off. Orlund turned the propane off and I think just let it die out itself. So I called a Pizza place and got to drive my new fancy van to go pick up a pizza for dinner.
Well Orlund just informed me he IS ushering tomorrow and I need a shower so I’ll have to get up REALLY early. Good night all!

Well this past week has been a busy one. Worked everyday except Monday. Tuesday and Thursday we even walked Gabe to School…. that’s 1.7Km walk, Google say’s it should take only 21minutes(walking). I timed it. Just walking there with kids, without stopping, would take us 1hour!  We took a picnic lunch and had a leisurely time getting there. That was fine. The walk home, not so fine. I had the bike trailer as the stroller. the 3 little kids all weigh roughly 20-30lbs. It can hold 2 children with total weight at 100lbs. I figured I’d stick all 3 in there. NOPE. not going to happen. I figured I’d carry Olivia (lightest) as they were all to tired to walk. Joy refused to go in. We were outside a high school (that I might add was on it’s lunch break ~ so yeah, lots of people watching), Joy was screaming 1- she wanted to go to school with Gabe, 2- she was to tired to walk, 3- didn’t want to go in the stroller. Olivia was screaming, well, because she felt like it? NOT cool! I finally strapped Olivia back in with Solomon, told Joy to hold on or she’d be left behind and walked quickly. It worked, Joy was so busy trying to keep up (while holding on) that she couldn’t cry. Finally she said “mommy no run run. No run run mommy”. awww. Broke my heart. So I carried her. Yup. We had only gone maybe 5minutes before she was to tired to run anymore. So I carried her, once in a while she would throw a fit kicking and screaming. (once in a while is more like 3/4 of the way home). And Olivia was crying/screaming because she was tired but didn’t want to go to sleep. Lets just say I wasn’t very impressed by the time we got home. But they all slept good. Thursday I attached an umbrella stroller to the front of the bike trailer (sure I looked goofy!) but it worked. I convinced Joy to sit in it and get strapped in, and away we went. Unfortunately I didn’t drink enough on this walk, so although we made it home with less effort I was done in. Even zonked out for a couple minutes while the kids were down!

That isn’t all that happened this week, but that was the part that took the most effort! It was a long week, as they all are when I have the boys until 5:30pm. This next week I have 2 days off (in a row!) and they happen to be the days that Orlund is in Vancouver for training. So I have the car. I have WAY to much I want to do. lol. Got a project (or two, or three) at home to do and some much needed shopping (grocery/needs) that I need to do out. Going to have to pick and choose I guess!  (I have a few pics of my stroller contraption, I will add later tonight ~ hopefully).

At the moment I am pretending I don’t know Joy is in Olivia’s crib keeping her from sleeping… it’s almost 8pm, they both should be asleep… I’ll go in in a few minutes. Orlund is working late so I can pretend I don’t hear them for a bit longer.

Tonight I had an amusing, weird, strange phone call here it is~
Shortly after Orlund headed off to work, the phone rang. A Woman was on the line “Would Orlund happen to be home?” she asked.
“No, sorry could I take a message?” I thought, perhaps it’s his work calling because he isn’t there yet?.
“Well you see,Do you know Bob Long?”
“yes”  I was thinking to myself I do know him, but we haven’t talked in a year or so.
She continued “I’m trying to, well, um….mumble jumble” finally she started making sense (kinda).”If you have Bob’s phone number it would be easiest”.
“Sorry I don’t have it, I haven’t talked to Bob in a few years” I answered.
“The thing is, he sold my son his motor bike and now I need some papers from him for selling it, do you know if he lives on ‘such a such’ street still?”
“I have no idea”
“I have his number from the buy and sell add, and he lived there”
“I really don’t know, you could try the number. I have him on Facebook but that’s about it” I explained.
“Well you see, I looked him up on Facebook when I couldn’t find his number in the phone book, and saw that he was friends with Orlund. I could find Orlund’s number in the phone book so I called you”.
“I’m sorry I don’t know how you could get in touch with him, why don’t you send him a message on Facebook?” I was thinking of anyone I could get his number from, I didn’t want to give out any phone numbers either.
“I don’t know how to do that, do you think you could send him a message for me? Tell him it’s Susie Sue regarding the Motor Bike and my number is…. Thanks”.
“sure…..”
That was that, she hung up and was gone. It just so happened she’d called while Joy was napping, so I decided to email Bob right away (if you didn’t guess I made up the names).
A few minutes later she called back “Bob called me, so you don’t need to message him anymore. Thanks”
“I already sent the message”
“Oh, okay, thanks. Bye”
…..weird….
I then tonight I checked my Facebook message. Bob had emailed me back. He was apologizing for me getting dragged into this. Apparently the guy bought the bike from Bob, but never changed it into his name. Poor Bob had the cops knock on his door at 2am one time questioning him about a robbery as the bike was seen at the crime scene. Bob even had to go and sign it out of impound! Then this guy (strung out on drugs) killed a pedestrian crossing the road (while on the bike), so now his mom is trying to sell some of the parts and just needed some more papers or something.
Very Weird. I didn’t mind helping out, it wasn’t like she was knocking at my door. Glad it will finally be over for Bob and his wife too. It makes me think though. I mean she found our number by looking at Bob’s friends on Facebook, then randomly picked someone and checked if they were in the phone book…….