Summer of the Cars

I don't remember much about the book "Summer of the Monkey" except that lots of stuff went wrong and lots of bad stuff happened. Well, that's how this summer has been for us, but not with monkeys- with cars....

It all started when Troy was on his way to California at the beginning of the summer. The plan was that he would take the Gallant because it was more likely to make the long trip. He made it to Blackfoot and had a melt down- literally! Luckily his parents weren't too far ahead and his mom's brothers (who live in Blackfoot) towed the car away to be fixed up in a shop there. So Troy took the other car to California, and on the way one of the tires fell off twice on Donner pass. Lovely.

So back at home it took about two weeks and $1000 to get the Gallant fixed. My sweet Mother in Law drove with me to blackfoot to retrieve it. Well, it was now leaking oil. So we went back. Another week later it was finally working.

To make a long story short, since then we've gotten 2 flat tires, replaced 8 tires and a radiator, and fixed a dented bumper, but it still wasn't enough. I topped all of this the beginning of september when I had a lapse of all sanity and ran into the truck in front of me at a stop light in BLACKFOOT of all places!





So now I have a banged up car, a ticket, and outragous insurance premiums to add to my list. If only these cars can make it until we're done with school!!!!
I hope that, like the book, this adventure ends with the summer. So, while it's sad that summer is over, maybe autumn will be kinder to us.

Introducing: Bandit!

Let me start out with a couple disclaimers. First of all, we don't adopt every stray in our neighborhood. We never adopted Sharona, the kitten that followed Monster around when he was tied up outside. And second of all, we had no intention of adopting a kitten this weekend, or anytime soon for that matter. I just came up the driveway on Saturday and he was hanging out outside the house....

And I went inside and said "Troy, hurry and come look at this kitten, it looks like a racoon!" so he did, and I left Troy trying to communicate with him while I went to get pizza. When I came back the kitten was gone and I was dissapointed. Oh well, we had pizza to eat. So I went inside and found Monster waiting ouside the bathroom. When I opened the door to let him in, this cat jumped out at me! It nearly gave me a heart attack!

He was pretty dirty so we don't think he belongs to anyone (we're not allowed to have outdoor cats in our trailer neighborhood) We'll keep our eye out for flyers, though. It turns out he's very sweet and Monster is pretty cool about it. He treats the new guys like the rest of the family....that is he chases him around the house and pounces on him from behind corners. We're not sure about his name and we'll see if we can handle two cats in our little home.

Nephews

My nephews are so fun. Because there's only two of them on my side I'm going to take a minute to highlight them on my blog. I just think little boys are so funny. He're some funny moments captured on film of both of them:


Aiden rolled from the top of the stairs to the bottom in this bag. What a goof!

This movi just kills me everytime I watch it! We were in a hotel and he did this for about an hour.