Car woes

I took my Solstice in the other day to have a defect fixed. Seems there is a hinge/trim piece on each side of the top that is catching and pinching the top when closing. I read about it on the Solstice Forums and decided to check mine out. Sure enough, mine had started pinching too.

They kept the car for three days before the parts came in! Then they scratched the paint on both sides while making the repair!!

Needless to say, the car is back at the dealership to get these scratches fixed. I'm driving a loaner - Buick Lucerne with a Northstar V8 engine. Nice car!

The dealership is giving me my next two oil changes free ($70 each with Mobil 1), and a free detail.

You can bet I'll be going over the paint with a magnefying glass.


On another note...

I'll be travelling to Auburn this weekend for the Auburn Band Alumni weekend. It'll be nice to see old friends again. Hopefully the football team can pull it together to beat lowly Tennessee Tech (known for their world famous tuba ensemble)

I'm picking up my second daughter from college to go with me. Hopefully we can do some rebuilding over the weekend.

This Moment!

Finally got the new CD delivered to my home! It's now on constant play where ever I happen to be.
Love the new tunes! Lots of variety in style and (as always) plenty of substance!

If you haven't already... Go out and buy "This Moment" by Steven Curtis Chapman. It's definitely worth the investment.

I'll be travelling to Nashville in a few weeks for the Shaohannah's Hope celebration/fundraising dinner. I think there is also a concert in Nashville that weekend. I will see SCC in Lancaster a few days before the trip, so it looks like I'll get two concerts within a couple of days. I'm excited!

Hope to get some great pictures to post here from the trip.

And so it goes...

My second daughter left today to go back to school.
She went without the car.

I think she only said two words to me the whole weekend (to be fair, I was working nights and she was away most of the time). Those words were "goodbye Dad".

Not exactly the best way to get your father to buy you a car to use at school, eh?


On another front... I helped my oldest daughter move her bed into her new room at our house today. I think she is glad to be home. Granted, most of the time she will be doing her own thing, but I believe it will be a good opportunity for her to get to know her younger siblings and get back in touch with what family really means.

Please continue to pray for me to have at least a grain of wisdom in dealing with these girls. Transition to adulthood can be so hard sometimes.

and in other news...

My oldest daughter has (finally) agreed to come back home for a while so she can get her life back on track.
She has really been spending a lot of time in the school of hard knocks. I think she has earned her degree. LOL!
My wife and I are shifting things around in several rooms to be able to give her a room of her own for as long as she needs it. It's hard to find the space, but I really feel that we need to do this. It's time for healing and mending fences.

Pray that I will have patience and will find ways to rebuild our relationship as adults. Pray that she will be accepting of suggestions and advice and offers of help.

This is really a big step for her. She has been out of our house for almost 5 years. She has a long way to go to get back on track. She has to do most of the work, but we are willing to help her along the way.

Frustrating (sorry for the rant)

Both my favorite football teams lost this weekend in the last 2 minutes of the game.

Auburn found a way to forget how they played in the first half and gave up what would have been a fantastic win against LSU.

Philadelphia allowed Chicago to run all over them in the last drive of the game. 'Course it took most of the game for them to actually score a touchdown...

Enough football.


My second daughter came home from college for the weekend. She wanted to visit with her boyfriend and check out another school to possibly transfer to. I think she wanted to see her family as well, but I haven't seen her yet, so I don't know if that's true or not.
She has been obsessed with having me help her buy a car so she can get around to her job and go places down at school. I do mean obsessed! She's called me and written me emails. The thing is, she wants to pick the car (a late model smaller car). I'm not able to afford covering a loan on one of these newer cars. For some reason, she can't seem to understand that.
So I was able to find an older car (1991) in great condition with a reasonable amount of miles on it. I personally know the former owner.
Well, she really has given me a hard time about this car, and I'm to the point of selling it to someone else. She hadn't even seen it before she was talking bad about it. She told me that all I ever bought were junkers that were constantly breaking down.
The fact is, that none of the cars I have bought for the kids to drive have EVER broken down. They have had some maintenance needs, but nothing an experienced adult wouldn't find reasonable.
Anyway, I spent a good bit of time documenting all that was done to the last few cars. Figuring total cost of ownership for them and comparing to a newer car (including insurance and fuel estimates). It comes down to costing her $300 less per month to go with the car I found vs. what she was wanting. Sounds good to me, how about you?
I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. The car needs to be run through inspection and have the title transferred to my name. I don't know if I'm going to let her take it down. She really has hurt my feelings about this.
I know I'm the parent and I need to have thick skin when dealing with my kids, but it still can be hard to take the abuse and be willing to do the extras like the car.

Pray for me. I need to have grace in dealing with the lack of gratitude from the kids. I need to express more gratitude myself in my life and show that as an example to my kids.

Broken records or bones or something...

I went to my oldest son's cross country meet on Saturday. Got there just in time to see him before he found out his group was supposed to be on the starting line with about 60 other kids from 20 schools. Seems they moved his team into the B class instead of their usual C class. Funny to watch the 5 of them jump a stone wall and sprint down the hill about 300 yards! The race started about 30 seconds after they got there!

I decided to walk to a spot at the halfway point and cheer them on. Once there, I noticed the runners approaching up the hill. I cheered as each of his teammates passed one by one. Funny... he's usually at the lead of this bunch of runners...

All of the runners have passed now and his coach comes up to me and asks if I saw him go by. I say no. Coach heads down the hill to look for him. The rest of the varsity team is getting concerned too and a few of them head back on the course to look for him.

I head back to the team tent to wait. There's no way I would have been able to help on course anyway if he was hurt. After a bit, I head over to the finish line and see that all of his teammates have finished their run. No one knows where he is.

Then I see one of the varsity kids waving me to the first aid tent. There sits my son getting his ankle taped. Apparently, he took a bad step on a root and rolled his ankle. He was in traffic at the 1 mile mark and couldn't see the ground as well as he should have. Fortunately, they had a golf cart to carry him back to first aid. The trainer thinks it might be broken and recommends heading to the emergency room for x-rays.

My son is disappointed because he really felt good on the run and thought he would have his personal best. Hard to console him and keep him from being angry at himself.

We go to the emergency room (only 6 miles away for once!) and have the x-rays done. The doctor can't tell for sure if there is a break. The pain is in the area of the growth plates at the end of the bones right above the ankle. They put a boot on him and tell us to make an appointment with orthopedics for later in the week.

The boy is to stay off his foot as much as possible over the next few days until we know for sure. If he is too active, he can permanently damage those plates and have irregular growth in his legs. Not sure how I'm supposed to keep this ADHD freak still for a few days. It's almost impossible!

Here it is only Monday and I've already had to get him off the trampoline and stop him from chasing his siblings around the house. Also have had to remind him several times to leave the boot on. Oh well... guess I should have had them put the temporary cast on and make him use crutches. Doubt that would have slowed him down either.

Guess it must not hurt that much. He hasn't asked for Motrin except for once.

I'll update when I get more info.

Time Passes Much Too Quickly*

* with apologies to Robert Lamm of Chicago...

Seems like time is flying by so fast lately.
I can't believe it's been 9 days since my last post.

I just finished reading a long post on my friend Kelby's blog (apostlesplace). She was at the Steven Curtis Chapman concert a few days ago in Tulsa, OK. I always enjoy reading her posts and getting the inside scoop on all things SCC! Thanks, Kelby! Her main site is Songtailor.com

She's got a lot of great pictures of Steven on her site as well.


Anyway...
Today is son #4's 10th birthday. Mom baked him some cupcakes and brought them to school for him to share with his class. I didn't get to see him before coming in to work tonight, so I hope it went great! Times like these, I wish I worked only on day shift.

I need to send my college daughter an email tonight. I really miss seeing her everyday. I didn't think I would, but I do. Something about the way our relationship was on a more adult level and there was that respect (most of the time). I know it's because she was very responsible for most of her teen years. Having an activity (riding horses competitively) that she loved and was willing to work hard for definitely helped her to grow up and get an appreciation for hard work and the rewards. She called last week and said she wants to transfer to another college for next Fall. We're looking for one that will meet her chosen major in the best way while allowing her to participate in competitive riding on the collegiate level.

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies on their division win!

Congratulations to my Auburn Tigers on their victory over the Florida Gators in the swamp!