How Sweet It Is

Is it Spring yet?

Look at the horsie!

What a week we had last week. It actually started the Friday before when we heard a rattle in our car. We dropped it off on Saturday to see what was wrong. They called us on Monday to say it would be $4000 to fix the car. A car that was fine except for this one rattle. A car that was just paid off. A car that was only five years old. Uh, no.

We'd been planning all along to buy another car this year. We were just putting off as long as we could to avoid the car payment for a few months. Our plan was to trade in Jim's '93 Tracker. He bought that car years ago when it already had over 100,000 miles. The car still runs great and has never had any major work done on it. In fact, it's overdue for an oil change.

Our plan changed. We traded in the PT Cruiser instead. There's just no way we were going to put $4000 into that car. Fuhgeddaboutit!

Jim would have loved an SUV, but they're about $10,000 more and the gas mileage is much worse. We got a great deal on a 2008 Town & Country Limited. It has everything we could need. We did not get the dvd player or the phone option. That package would have added $1000's to the price. We can get a dvd player to strap on the back of the seat and a bluetooth ear piece for a fraction of the price. I've also been told by many, many people that they prefer the portable dvd players to the installed ones anyway.

We spent our Saturday afternoon buying the car.

On Sunday, we tested it out. There's a park about 40 minutes away that hosts Sugar Camp Days one weekend in March every year. They have an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast with real maple syrup, ice carvings, a blacksmith, a cabin that processes maple syrup, areas set up that show how the trees are tapped, the lines the sap flows through, campfires set up with kettles making syrup the old-fashioned way, horse-drawn carts, and more. We've gone every year since I moved here, and Jim was going before that. We always meet our friend, Eric, there. This was the first time for Sera.

She loved every single minute of it. It was very cold; it always is. She ate her weight in pancakes and sausages. I think she ate more than I did. She loved running up and down the path. She loved the horses and the cart ride. We brought home one tired, sticky, happy girl.