As usual, Oregon weather is vacillating between perfect and dreadful. One day I think "I should get my warm weather clothes out...". The next day I am diving in my closet for that rain jacket I just put away! Still, I LOVE OREGON!

It would take too many words to describe the events of last week, but here is a fun summary:

-Decided to take a last minute late birthday trip for Aarron. His choice: deep-sea fishing!

-Drove to Depoe Bay

-Stayed in motel which looked a little questionable online, but actually turned out to be a darling little place.

-Actually got out of bed at 5:30am! (Only for you, honey...)

-Ate breakfast at "The Sea Hag" (Yeah, umm, that's what I thought, too. But it was the only place open! Trust me, we looked for others!)

-Aforementioned restaurant turned out to be a good local FAMILY restaurant

-Arrived at charter office at 7:30am only to find out that our lives would be in mortal danger if we went on the boat (AKA - they cancelled the charter due to inclement weather)

-Took the long way home through Corvallis.

-Pretty much knocked myself out with the Dramamine I took to prevent sea-sickness. (And it was the less-drowsy formula! And yes, I followed the dosage instructions!)

-Took much-needed nap to sleep it off.

-Woke up to four horses out of their pasture.

-Chased horses all over Barlow for an hour. THAT was an adventure, let me tell you. If it hadn't been for the brave woman who parked her spotless Lexus in front of a galloping horse, I probably would have been chasing those horses all the way down to the highway!

-Bought two baby chicks -- they are SO cute!

-Waited for over and hour and a half to go eat dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.

That was just Friday and Saturday! Sunday was a full day, as usual. Adam presented an excellent lesson on Church Discipline, and then we had a singing at evening services. The afternoon was full of the little "homey" things that made it hard to go to work on Monday - gardening, house cleaning, friends over. I thank the Lord for the every day little blessings that make life so beautiful.

What is your favorite little blessing? What types of things make you thankful for the sundry activities of your day-to-day life?

The best thing about bad days/weeks/months/years is that they eventually get better!

We did end up selling the Subaru for parts, and then we were able to get our car running for under $200! What a blessing that news was!

Then we had THE MOST BEAUTIFUL weekend! The springs and falls of Oregon make up for the dreary days of January and February. It was absolutely perfect here.

Thanks to all of you who were at my Stampin'Up! workshop at Jessica's on Friday! It was a blast to share those crafty ideas with ya!

Saturday was a very, umm...adventurous day. Aarron is helping my boss with construction on our new office building, so he worked from 7-9am. Then we had spring building cleaning at the church building. After that, we decided to head over to watch one of the Canby girls play in her rugby game. Talk about INTENSE AND INSANE. It is really entertaining to watch, though. I still don't totally understand the rules, but there was a lot of dogpiling and heads thudding against the grass. There were two major injuries within the first 30 minutes. I won't even begin to explain how bizarre it was -- if you haven't seen it yourself, there just really are no words to describe it. We had a blast, and Hanna was great! Canby won by quite a bit, so that was cool.

At 3:00pm that afternoon I went over to one of the members' house to learn how to cook Puerto Rican food (they are from Puerto Rico). Ramonita is one of the sweetest, most sincerely purehearted ladies I have had the privilege to know. She had invited Sandra (our preacher's wife) and I to come cook. The afternoon took a hilarious turn when we both got there an discovered that we weren't JUST cooking. We spend the first hour and a half doing a Leslie Simmons 4 mile "Walk Away the Pounds" exercise video in her living room, after which we watched most of a Yanni concert video! Ha ha ha! Talk about a very memorable time. We had a blast -- more so for being totally unprepared for that part of our afternoon agenda. Thank you, Ramonita! That was an afternoon I won't soon forget.

Sunday we learned that Justin and Jade FINALLY got engaged! WOOOHOO! We are so excited for them. :o)

Thank you, Guy and Kari, for a great lunch on Sunday!

I think the young people here at Canby are making a Sunday night tradition of dinner and Mafia. This time we had it at the Brainards, and it was SO much fun. Definitely a tradition worth keeping.

Thanks to everyone who made this past weekend so much better than last week. We love ya!

Car off Craigslist - $600
Extra gas for a week - $30
New seatcovers - $30
New timing belt, water pump, tensioner, valves, fan clutch and labor - $1200 and still going....

Learning that you need a pre-buy inspection no matter what - PRICELESS!
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This whole situation could make several great commercials.

State Farm - "When my new car broke down, I called my agent for a auto shop recommendation. When he learned we were just down the street from a good shop, he showed up in workout clothes and helped us push it 1/4 mile to save us the tow bill. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there..."

Auto Repair Facility - "No matter what kind of car you're looking at, a pre-buy inspection is a MUST....[go on to tell our story]..."

Mastercard - [see above "Priceless" list] "SOme things money can't buy, for everything else, there's Mastercard..."

And I am sure I could keep going. So....what is the price of experience?

Just to tell you the end of our story, the Subaru is sitting at the repair shop. It has so many things wrong, we could spend $2k and STILL not fix everything. Someone we know is going to buy it for parts, which will just about cover the $100 in tear down labor we owe the shop and maybe most of the tank of gas we put in it last week.

I will NEVER buy a car again without a pre-buy inspection, no matter how little I pay for the car. :o)

We're going to have to borrow a church member's car for a couple weeks, since our Kia is not really running either. Thankfully they will be out of town for two weeks, so that will give us time to save some more money to get over this crisis.

The Lord does continue to provide in strange and mysterious ways, so we are just leaning on Him to lead us through this labyrinth of car troubles. Meanwhile, we are just laughing. It is either that or cry my eyes out. I did that one day, and discovered laughing about it is much more fun. :o)

Looking forward to some sunshine this week. Yesterday we had a teasing warm wind blowing during the afternoon. It was perfect! I planted flowers and cleaned house in the afternoon. After evening services, we invited all the young people from Canby over to play games and have dinner at our house. It was quite the housewarming to pack all 11 of us in our teeny little place! It was such a blast. But I wonder - is it a bad omen that the game we chose to play was "Murder"? Hmmm......

Anyway, it was SUCH an encouraging and fun time. We had a good mix of young marrieds, a soon-to-hear-wedding-bells couple :o) , and some high school and junior high kids. Our preacher, Adam, is a GREAT murder narrator. I thank the Lord for the people He has placed in our lives. This year has been so much fun!

Side Note: Cheap-O Car has a broken timing belt, and our Klunky Kia barely made it to church yesterday.......Aren't cars fun....

So, we went and bought a "beater" car on Monday of this week. We found it on Craigslist after looking for several weeks. It is a 1987 Subaru Wagon - a little rough, but at the heart it seemed like it would be a good little commuter for me to get to work.

Well....

Last night I ran to the grocery store across the street from my work, and as I was sitting at the stop sign to pull out of the parking lot, I suddenly found that my car had died. Flat out just stopped running. Uh oh.

The great thing about working in a small town is that everyone is SO helpful. Within minutes I had three good samaritans pushing my car out of the main entrance into a parking spot. Aarron came, at which point we decided to call Jay (my boss, our friend, and our insurance agent) and see if he knew a good local repair shop. In a soon-to-be-funny turn of events, the shop he recommended was about 1/4 mile from where we were. Literally just down the road a few blocks. So instead of paying for a tow truck (or submitting it on my insurance), we decide "Hey, it's not THAT far..."

Yup, you guessed it, we decided to push it there the good ol' fashioned way. The funny part is just as we were rolling up our sleeves, so to speak, Jay showed up in his car. He and Aarron pushed it down the street while I steered and kept the clutch in (the former good samaritans and I had discovered the car wouldn't budge without the clutch pushed it, even in neutral - go figure) As we neared the body shop, one of the workers recognized Jay as she was leaving the parking lot, so she turned around and helped us park it so they could look at it this morning. I wish I had a picture or video showing my agent jogging my car down the street --- it was memorable, to say the least.

So, we'll see if our cheap-o car was worth it. Next time I am taking it to a mechanic BEFORE I pay any money. (I know, I know, I should have done that!!) The most ironic thing is that 30 minutes before i broke down, Aarron and I were saying we needed to get it in this weekend for a general tune up and oil change.:o) I just thought I might be able to actually drive it in for that appointment.....