Excitement!

Well then, we just returned from buying a new vehicle ... introducing Big Whitey, our "new" 2003 Excursion.

Here's a picture of Cyndie with her new ride.

It's not going to get great gas mileage, but we really felt like we needed a vehicle with a heavier frame (this is a 3/4 ton versus the 1/2 ton chassis of the Suburban) and a bigger engine (this has a 6.8L V10) in order to really be able to pull the boat and not put too much stress on the transmission. Here are a few more pictures from the Craigslist listing:

Beginning the Weekend

Cyndie has a scrapbooking retreat this weekend that she's helping her friend Sherri out with. She'll be gone from Friday morning through Sunday afternoon. So, she's getting ready for that ... baking some muffins, getting all her scrapbooking* stuff together, ordering photos, etc.

*I'm seriously considering starting to use the term scrapping rather than scrapbooking. After typing scrapbooking several times ... that's a long word. Man, but still, scrapping just sounds so dumb, and really isn't that much shorter.

My preparation is going to get some movies to watch. My sister is taking a Friday/Saturday trip, so Gow and I are going to get together to be single dads, and that means after the kids go to bed Friday night, we're queuing up a couple of guy movies. The theme for the evening is cops, so we're going to watch Brooklyn's Finest and Pride and Glory. My part is to go get the movies*

*How lame is this ... we have to head over to Delavan to get anything besides Redbox. The last movie rental store in Lake Geneva closed a couple of months ago!

Tonight is the last soccer practice/game of the year. The kids have done great and really enjoyed it (especially Timmy).

Midweek Bullets ...

How about some midweek bullets (for lack of any "big" things to write about) ...

• Some sports stuff ... the Vikings have re-acquired star receiver (and sometime pain in the butt) Randy Moss. Exciting times for the Vikes who need to get their season rolling.
• Liverpool has been bought (pending approval from the league and some legal details). This is very good. Their current owners are, to put it succinctly, lame.
• The kids had soccer last night and had a great time there.
• We babysat the local cousins last night while Laura and Gow had a date ... both girls were really interested in the gerbils, but didn't quite know what to do with them. Sally wanted to hold them, but everytime one touched here, she'd jump back and be pretty timid. Daisy was very excited by the gerbils, but lacked any finesse, so was restricted to just looking!
• The Excursion is still on hold while we get the DVD situation straightened out. The seller is getting it repaired, and then we'll (I think) go through with the sale.
• Cyndie and I had art class this morning and really enjoyed that. We were both very happy with the paintings that we came up with.
• Tonight is Cyndie's last sailing event of the year. She's really enjoyed that.
• We worked on our budget last night. We're going to try very hard over the winter to really curtail our expenses so that we can pay cash for the new truck (assuming that happens) and still do some of the projects around the house that we want to do.
• The jacuzzi has sprung another leak. We're really getting tired of that. We'll see where we decide to go with that little gem.
  
• It's a beautiful fall day ... I think the temperature readout in the car on the way home from art class said 73. Awesome!
  

So there you have it, some midweek fun.

Monday ... completed

Monday ... finished. I guess the development to report is that we did NOT go to pick up the Excursion we're in talks over. I'm not sure if I mentioned that yesterday, but the plan was to go get it at 5p in Janesville. When I had seen it, the DVD player was not working. Cyndie and I discussed it and decided that we didn't want to deal with stuff not working. The guy said he'd knock $200 off the price. I called the local Ford dealer and they said that it would most likely cost $665 to fix/replace, with a small chance that it would be less if it was just a loose connection or something. So, we (me and the seller) decided that he'd take it into his shop and they'd get the DVD working. So I should hear from him today regarding that. If the DVD works, the deal is on. If not, then we'll have to see if he's willing to lower the price by $655. If so, the deals is on, if not, we'll probably walk away. More on this breaking story as it develops!

On the gerbil front ... they are here and installed in Emma's room. She's really excited to have them. The kids both played with them and held them. We made a little hut/play thing out of a used cottage cheese container and some wood. I don't think it will last, however, as by this morning the gerbils had chewed it up pretty good. I guess we'll have to go with wood toys and stuff bought from the store made out of harder plastic. Pepper is fascinated by the gerbils. The aquarium that they're in is right at his eye level (currently on top of Emma's dress up box). He just stands there staring at them. We'll see where that goes. This morning when I went in to wake up Emma for her shower, she was up already and rearranging the "furniture" in the aquarium. Funny!

Today Timmy's home from school with a bit of a sore throat. He and Cyndie ran some errands this morning and also got the Suburban back from the shop. Cyndie reports that it is running well, so that's a nice thing. It definitely gives us plenty of time to find the right replacement vehicle.

Crazy Week

Well now, that week didn't go exactly as anticipated. As you may recall, we started the week with a strange Monday where we spent much of the day getting us and the boat back from the weekend up at Green Lake. Well, we've been without the Suburban now for 10 days or so. The shop where we had the transmission warranty is fixing it, though they outsource that work to a different shop, a transmission specialist, down in Illinois. So the Suburban was supposed to be fixed that Friday and being brought back up to Lake Geneva, where we could pick it up on Saturday. That didn't happen. Cyndie talked to "our" (the LG shop) this morning and apparently the "other" shop started driving the truck back up here and something when wrong. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure if Cyndie was told any details, but we're still waiting on that front. A good thing is that we're going to get a loaner car in the interim. It's going to be a Ford Taurus with no power steering ... so Cyndie should get a good workout from that!

Aside from the car dealings, midway through the week my laptop crapped out, so I spent a good portion of Thursday working with the tech guy at work to try to get it moving again, then most of Friday getting my files transferred from the old, non-working machine to a new laptop. Then the rest of the day getting the new one configured and putting software on it, etc. So now I'm up and running again, with a spiffy new laptop. It's got a new operating system on it, Windows 7, so that's both fun, and challenging! So, that's the biggest reason behind not doing any blog posts, my apologies.

The rest of the week was normal ... soccer for the kids, Emma started Girl Scouts (Brownies) for the year. They're already selling girl scout cookies. If you want to buy any, please let me (or Emma) know. If you're at a distance and don't anticipate seeing us soon after the November 8 (I think) receive date for the cookies, you can also participate by buying boxes of cookies that will be donated to a local food pantry. Timmy is very much enjoying practicing soccer at home. We have a goal set up that we gave him for Christmas last year. He digs doing drills and shooting into the net. Lately he's been very into being a goalie. He loves to dive after the ball.

Over the weekend my Auntie Diane and Uncle John (whose cabin near Kansas City we've gone to multiple times) stopped through. It was fun to see them and head out on the lake with them for a late afternoon. Uncle John is a "car guy", so he went with us to look at a Ford Excursion we were interested in. Which leads us too ...

We started looking for a Suburban replacement. Before the transmission went out, we were thinking we'd have a year or two before we'd have to replace it. However, this event got us thinking that we should start looking around to at least see what's out there. We have, we think pending a final, successful return of the Suburban, some time to shop and get a good deal. We're looking for a truck that can easily pull the boat (we think the Suburban may be a bit underpowered to handle the boat) and something that we can, at least, fit our family into, but preferably a 7 or 8 seater. So we went to see this Excursion that was for sale by a private party near the kids' school. It was a good deal in theory, but the truck was not in good shape. It had been in an accident (replaced headlight and fenders, chassis welds, etc), had some rust that had been painted over, the transmission didn't feel right (lots of hesitation in shifting, really high revving), and the oil was REALLY dirty. So we didn't jump at that. Obviously. But yesterday I drove over to Janesville to look at another Excursion. As bad as that first one was, this one was great. The Excursion is built on a Ford F250 chassis, so it's got a good starting basis to tow the boat. This one has a 6.8 liter V10, plenty to pull the boat. It also has a Banks Power system which is an exhaust system add-on which increases the power of the engine. It rides really nice, has been well taken care of, has some nice add-ons (like a DVD player), and, most importantly, is a pretty nice deal. it's around $3000 less and blue book (for a private party seller). So we made an offer, and it was accepted. Now we're dealing with the bank and getting enough cash to make the deal. Right now, maybe because it's early in the week, the local bank doesn't have enough cash for us. I may need to end up getting a bank check or something like that to pay the guy (and asking him if he'll accept that). Fun times.

Oh, and another new toy is coming today. Emma has been saving her money and doing extra chores all summer in order to get a gerbil. I'm not sure what got that into her head, but she's been very persistent. She's managed to save $42.16. So starting around a month and a half ago, she and Cyndie started checking Craigslist and ebay and the newspapers, for cages/aquariums and accessories. Well, yesterday they found someone up in Milwaukee (not too far from my office) who is selling 3 gerbils and all the accessories. She was asking $80, but Emma emailed and told her about herself and that she'd been saving all summer and got a reply along the lines of "awwwww, of course I'll take that =)".* So needless to say, Emma is VERY excited for those gerbils to arrive and become a part of her room.

*Those extra w's and the smiley face where part of the e-mail, I didn't even have to add them for emphasis.

So, there you go, our week begins with some new excitement!

Well, that didn't go exactly as planned!

We're back from our weekend in Green Lake. This was the second half of a home exchange that was non-similtaneous ... they were at our house over the 4th of July weekend while we were at a family reunion. This house is right on a big lake in central Wisconsin. It was a beautiful house! But more on that later ...

The weekend started normally. We picked up the kids at school at around noontime and started the drive. Yes, I said started the drive. We didn't actually finish it, though we did complete around 98% of the needed 131 or so miles. We stopped to get gas for the boat a few minutes before we were to arrive. When we left the gas station, we went up a fairly steep grade. Smoke started coming out from under the hood. We stopped (duh), and investigate. There was some smoke coming from a small reservoir that had popped open on one side. So we closed that up and kept going. We missed a turn off (no street sign ... thanks Google Maps), and after we turned around, the truck seemed to be starting to lack power. So we tried a little more and then stopped as it became obvious we were not going to be able to pull the boat up the grade in front of us. Enter AAA. We got towed (suburban AND boat) to the lake house. The tow truck left us and the boat there and towed the suburban to a shop. We later found out that the transmission was shot. Now the "Yeah Cyndie" part. When we had the transmission replaced a year and a half ago, she shopped around a bunch to find a place with a good price and a long warrantee. The place we used offered a 3 year/36k miles warrantee. It's been about a year and a half and something like 15k miles! So, it's under warrantee. We had the truck towed down to Lake Geneva on Sunday, and now we're dealing with that shop. We think they'll try to wiggle their way out from under the full repair, but that's not going to happen. It's clearly under warrantee, Cyndie had just checked all the fluid levels before we left on the trip, and we checked again after the "smoking" incident, and the shop that took a look up in Green Lake said that the transmission was not done well. Soooo, hopefully this is just a bump in the road and we'll be back and working sooner rather than later.

On the vacation side, it was a lot of fun. Our friends, the Goreckis, came up with us. The house was a 6 bedroom, 6 1/2 bath house with a media room, foosball (Timmy's favorite) and pool, a spa, and beautiful views. We cruised on the boat (thanks to Cyndie going over to the neighbors and asking if we could use their truck!), including driving into town on the boat to have dinner Sunday night. The neighbor boy was the same age as Kahlib (7th grade), so they played a lot and did a pretty good job of including Timmy. They played a lot of football, and Timmy loved to tackle! Emma enjoyed the spa, though she wasn't feeling 100% the whole weekend.

Monday morning Cyndie left with the Goreckis to drive home and then borrow another friend's truck, drove back, and then back home with us and the boat. I worked in the morning and early afternoon. We got back home around 6:30, and went straight to the Williams Bay boat launch to put the boat back out on the buoy. Then home to unload our junk, then over to the drop the truck at the friend's house ... whew, it was a long day!!!

All in all, it was an adventurous weekend, and a memorable one. Hopefully we'll end up with very little out of pocket on this, and have a good transmission in a week or so.

Low key, but busy too!

Well, yesterday was a bit low key. The usual stuff ... school, Tim and Emma went to the local corn maze and haw fort with our friend Monica and her boys, Cyndie had sailing. When Emma got home from the excursion, she had a bit of a headache and was pretty listless. So we had some dinner and hit the sack pretty early last night ... Cyndie and I too.

Today, however, seems a bit busier. Cyndie has a couple of appointments, we're taking the boat out (to bring with up to Green Lake this weekend), we're packing for the trip, the kids have soccer, and Cyndie is helping serve at a restaurant in town that is donating $7 of every $9 charged to a local charity that she helps out with (Side by Side). The kids and I will head on over there after soccer. So, it should be a busy afternoon and evening.

On the kid front ... Emma is enjoying third grade. She's made a new friend who lives just off Schoefield named Julia. Cyndie met Julia's mom during the apple orchard trip a couple of days ago, so it sounds like a play date will be happening soon.

Timmy totally loves soccer. He's always wanting to play out in the yard, and looks forward to going to what he calls soccer "class".

So that's it on the Wildwood DeVries front!