Good things happening

Last Friday was our walk. Despite some rain, it was great success. I got there early and helped set up and then worked the hospitality tent until it was time for TB to see the exhibits and then walk. We made, pre-walk, over $11,000 to fund the PTA budget for the year and invest in Smartboards for all the classrooms! A local high school marching band showed up and marched with the kids and then played in front of the school for awhile. Their concert was sadly cut short because it started to rain. The second and third graders also had their time cut short for seeing the exhibits because of the rain but shortly after they packed everything up, it cleared off enough that they could walk. All of the volunteers and students were given shirts and I heard that some of the kids were so excited about getting their shirts the day of the walk, they started crying. We are talking shirt sponsors for next year to offset some of that cost, which is by far, the biggest expense of putting on the walk. Hopefully, we'll get a couple and our bottom line will come out looking even better.

Enormous thanks to all the companies who donated supplies, people who donated money and volunteers that donated their time to make this event a continued success. We simply couldn't do it without the community support that we receive!

The other good thing was that we bought a new van yesterday. The plan had been to keep RF's car another couple of years, pay a significant down payment on a new car that point and he would take my van, while I got the new car. Unfortunately, as tends to be the case, the plan went astray when RF's transmission went out. After looking at it, we determined that we did not want to put 3000 plus dollars into a 9 year old, that was only worth 3000 so the hunt for a new van began. We had anticipated trading it in and trying to a little bit out of it. Sadly, as RF and FIL were driving it to the dealer, the transmission went for real. There was a loud bang and something hit the floor of the car and when they coasted off the road, they went back and picked up pieces of the transmission that were scattered around the road. The mechanic that works on our cars might be interested in buying because he has another Saturn with a good transmission and a bad engine.

I knew that I wanted a few things, including power sliding doors, fold in floor seats and rear heat and air. We struggled a little to find a low milage vehicle that had those things in our price range. We found a few things that were "almost there" but weren't totally right. Fortunately, we were in a position to walk away from the not quite right ones until we found one that really worked. We found it last week, although it was a little outside our budget. I wanted FIL to take a look at it so we had him go with us yesterday morning, with the idea being that we would go back Thursday morning while MT was in school and do all the paper work. FIL gave his approval and I ask the guy if we could stat running the number and playing the waiting game and that we would come back today to finish up the paperwork and pick up the van. He said we could but then offered to "make us a deal" if we could get it finished yesterday since it was the last day of the month. I was willing to make a deal so we spent the entire day out there yesterday, doing the paperwork to buy the van.

MT was an absolute ROCK STAR about the whole thing. She played and chatted with the salesman (dude scored major brownie points because he was nice to her) and ate popcorn and walked around and only got whiny once, an HOUR after she normally eats lunch. We got there about 8:15 yesterday morning and I pulled off the lot at 2! Big thanks to my friend K, who I called at 12:30 and asked if she could get the boys at school, while she was there with her girls, since, as it turned out, there was no hope of me getting there on time!

My van is awesome. It is black with gray interior. It has my fold down seats so I can fold the seats into the floor and gain a ton of storage space or make it easier to get to the back seat but I still have them with me if I need the seating once I get somewhere. It also has power sliding doors, which are fantastic! I couldn't pay the kids to shut the door in the old van but now they fight over who gets to push the button. Eventually the novelty will wear off but even then, I'll have my buttons so I won't have to yell at them to close the doors all the time. It also has the rear heat and air so I don't have to listen to "I'm so hot" or "I'm so cold" all the time. Now, if I could just get them to quit touching the vents all the time!

The final good thing that happened was I went to the Make a day better blogger meetup last night. It was for local bloggers and was done in conjunction with Office Max's push to end teacher funded classrooms. It was great to finally put faces with screen names (the pictures don't do you justice, ladies!) and hang out with good friends as well. Besides all that, there was food donated from local businesses and fat bag full of post party swag! You can expect a future post with more details about the event and the swag, once I get the email with all the company links so I can link to everything properly. When I heard about the swag bags, I expected pens and notepads and other lame things that you get at all those free events. We got bottles of lotion, brownie mixes, water bottles, reusable bags, etc. And not the tiny little travel sizes either. Full sized stuff! With companies being that generous, the least they deserve is a shout out on my little blog :)