She's Been a Good Friend (Thankful Thursday)

So.....our car died last Wednesday night. Dead. Kaput. Finito. Doornail.

The Mister was out of town, the kids and I were driving home from church, it was 9:00 at night, and it was sleeting. And the car just....died. No sputtering. No chugging. We weren't even stopped at a light or anything. We were driving down the road at about 50 mph and it just shut off. The windshield wipers stopped mid-swipe, the power steering went out, the electric door locks wouldn't work. The headlights did stay on, but dimmed. And the flashers worked. Thankfully we were able to coast into a parking lot and out of the path of traffic.

So.

Umm, now what? Well, we called my cousin to come rescue us, and then we started making a list of all the things we were thankful for:

#1 - THANK GOD FOR CELL PHONES!! Jacob asked, "What would we do if we didn't have a cell phone?" That thought made me shudder. Is anyone out there old enough (like me) to remember the days before cell phones? What would we do? We would get out and walk. In the dark. In the freezing rain. There was a Walmart around the corner, but yeah, very thankful for our cell phone.

#2 - We were thankful we all had our coats on! It's not uncommon for Jacob to run out the door without his. He'll often say to me, "But Mom, I'll only be outside from the house to the car and from the car to _______ (the school building, or the church building, or whatever). I'll run." Even in just the 15 minutes or so it took for my cousin to get there, it got really cold in that car.

#3 - We were thankful we live in town and not in the country yet, like we want to someday. It could have been a much longer time before my cousin was able to get there.

#4 - I'm thankful we were able to coast far enough to get out of traffic.

And the best one of all....

#5 - Kloe's answer....."I'm thankful we don't have to go through this alone, because God is with us." Awesome answer, baby girl. And you are absolutely right.

So.

The Mister has checked out everything he can think of on the car. His conclusion? He thinks it's the computer. Great. You know what that means don't you? New car. We can't afford a new car. We can't even afford a new used car. Ugh.

We've had our car for almost 13 years. It's only the 2nd car I've ever owned. I got my first car when I was a sophomore in college (nope, no car for me when I turned 16) and drove it for 7 years until it literally blew up. Not the whole car, but the engine. The car we have now has been a really good car. Just a couple of major repairs in 13 years. I think that's a pretty good record.

So here's the question: how much do you spend to repair a 13-year-old car versus just getting a new one? We really can't squeeze a monthly car payment into our budget right now. We haven't had a car payment in forever. Like 8 years. And it would take a lot of repairs to equal all those years of no payments.

I'm having visions of my precious Sea World vacation flying out the window.

So.

Meanwhile, we are driving this cute little banana rental:


Actually, it's more like the color of mustard. Easy to find in a parking lot. :) The kids love it. It is cute and fun and zippy. BUT, it's a 2-door, so you have to lean the seats forward to get into and out of the very tiny back seat. It gets old quick. I love driving a not-13-years-old car. And I love the keyless entry. They didn't really have those 13 years ago when we bought my car. :)

So. Anyway. We finally got our car towed to the repair shop and we're waiting to hear from them what the damages are. And that's where we stand for now. I'll keep you posted.

To be continued....