Labor and Delivery

Where was Leslie on Friday?:
A)Burden Honda Care B)CarMax C)Joe Myers Toyota D)K&J Automotive E)all of them

Labor pains began at 8 a.m. when I took the Odyssey to Burden to have the belt tensioner (& belt) replaced. We waited too long after my temporary fix there three weeks ago, and the squeal was so loud and consistent, it had to be fixed. Another $160 spent on the "Horrid Honda". See previous post for that saga.

Brief stop at home to gather all the necessary paperwork and then to CarMax for a 10a.m. appointment with Jim. While the Honda is being appraised, I test drive a Corolla with Jim. They don't have any manual transmissions at this CarMax location so I drive an automatic. I am very impressed with it's pick-up, handling and ride comfort. After the test drive I find out what CarMax will pay us to trade or buy outright the Honda. It's right at the price I had researched online, so I'm content. I left with the seven day guarantee paper.

Another stop at home to grab some lunch and then over to Joe Myers Toyota because they have a 5-speed Corolla and I want to test drive it and also see what they will give us for a trade. Not only does it drive well, but they had reduced the price from what the web site showed. I call Tim at work to tell him they were letting me take the Corolla home and keeping the Honda to appraise. He tells me to take the car to our mechanic. So without stopping at home (or passing GO), I head to K&J Automotive.

They are the absolutely nicest auto shop and James stops and gives it a look over and a clean bill of health.

I head home to await Tim. He arrives shortly after me and we go for more test driving and decide to go negotiate.

Back to Joe Myers. Lots of talking, phone calls, paper shuffling, and WAITING. They won't give us as much as CarMax for the Honda, even after much back and forth, so we decide Tim will stay there and start the Corolla paperwork, I'll take the car to CarMax to start the selling of it and he'll join me there to finalize the sale and then I'll go back to Joe Myers to finalize purchase. Off down the road to CarMax I head, when Tim calls and says the sales manager ask me to return.

Back I go. It's not that bad as the dealers are within spitting distance of each other.

The sales managers agrees to offer us comparable and so we trade the Honda to them.

We then have to wait for the finance guy. He's a Christian and makes all the tedious stuff as fun as possible. We had pre-approval with the same Credit Union we had the Honda with for a loan, but we were pleasantly surprised that Joe Myers credit union conglomerate beat it by a whole point. We are awesomely blessed with a new loan rate of 4.54%.

Lots of paper signing and then finally off to bring the new baby home. But, they are way behind in the prep area and haven't even started cleaning her up. We decide to have her "detailed" when we go back for tags etc... and leave the dealer at about 7:30.

Twelve hours of labor. We are thankful it's over.

Another New Addition!

We are pleased to welcome our 2nd pre-owned vehicle this year to our family. It's a girl, 2007 Toyota Corolla 5-speed. Adopted into our family as of Friday, July 25 at 7:25 p.m. and weighing 2722 lbs.We are opening up the comments sections for a contest of naming the car. The winning name will be announced sometime in the future.

Explanation of Slide Show Below

Tim's sister and spouse were on the mainland from Hawaii for Lynn's son's wedding in California. They then made a whirlwind tour of Texas to see all their family and some friends here. They started in Austin, then went to LaGrange, on to Sugarland and finally Northwest Houston.

Tim smoked a brisket and we had everyone here on Saturday. Bekah brought some awesome green bean casserole (one of my favorites), Wendy made shrimp dip and Michael supplied some good beer. Since so many of the family had hair long enough for pony tails, we planned a pony tail picture. Since Stephen didn't want to be left out, he supplied his own wig.

We also had fun with water. Bekah totally whooped Nick in a water gun/hose battle and then later Saturday night, Linda and Lynn helped with the cleanup from a broken water supply line under the hall bath sink. It's amazing how quickly water spreads.

I STILL didn't get a picture of Uncle Frank and Wendy for my family fridge gallery, but Mike insist on being unique. Everyone else cooperated.

Sibling Reunion

Bye, Bye!

We've decided to part ways with our 2003 Odyssey but only if it will stay together long enough to get it to CarMax or another dealer.

The air conditioning was replaced less than a month ago and then last week the back vent window motor died ($206.00) and TWO DAYS later, the hood latch broke (AGAIN). We fiddled and fiddled but could not get the hood open.

The 2nd hood latch was put in in 2006 at the dealer but no longer under warranty, so I went to our Honda mechanic this morning at Burden. The belt tensioner is also bad now and so we squeal, especially before the engine is warmed up. He quoted me $289 to repair both. I just about cried. I told him we had decided to sell the van and hated having to keep repairing it. I told him to fix the latch but not the tensioner. He went out and when he came back told me he had put a shimmy somewhere so the hood latch would work, tightened something and sprayed stuff on belt tensioner and no charge. I almost cried, again.

He said, go take your headache and get rid of it. We're researching options and are going to check with my son-in-law's dad who works for a dealer.

In everything give thanks. I'm trying, but somedays....