The week we bought a new van

This big news for the week of January  19-25 was that we bought a new (to us) van! We officially bought it on Saturday, but I started planning to buy it on Monday so we'll talk about that first. 

The van belonged to my brother Billy. He'd bought it from my aunt Karen back in 2023 when he'd moved back to the United States from New Zealand. Then he and his family moved to Canada. 

About 6 months or so ago Billy was possibly going to get a new job in Ottawa Canada. That's over on the other side of Canada. He wasn't sure if he wanted to take his van with him. When he mentioned he might sell it I was like, "Oh I'll buy it!" His van was a Honda Odyssey and I LOVE Hondas and have quite enjoyed the Odyssey I bought from my sister Emily. 

Well Billy didn't get the Ottawa job and ended up not having the Vancouver job anymore either. So he was back in the US trying to figure out what was next. He and his wife Becca decided their best plan was to go to Germany. They could stay with some friends and Billy could take some auditions and see what happened. (My brother is a professional French Horn player.)

So they went to Germany with the hope that he'd get a job, but even if he didn't they would have a cool adventure for a few months. He ended up getting the second job he auditioned for. So he and his family are staying in Germany for the foreseeable future. 

And that meant his van was available for me to buy if I was interested. And boy was I still interested. My van has been getting very close to 300,000 miles. But I had no real plan for a new vehicle. Actually we've been talking about buying Brandon a truck. If he got a truck Charlotte and Lydia would get the Pilot and I'd keep driving the van. I was just kind of planning to drive the van until it died and then replace it with maybe a 5 seater sedan or something. 

But buying the van from Billy changed the whole equation. I'd get the new van and the twins would get my old van. Brandon would keep the Pilot - for now. He's actually fairly certain he knows what's wrong with the Jeep. Remember the Jeep? It's been in exile in our garage waiting for Brandon to fix it. If he does get it running he will drive the Jeep. The Pilot will go to the girls. I'll keep the new van and we will sell the old van. 

Anyway that's all really complicated, but the final result is NO CAR PAYMENTS. And I really really really don't want car payments. So it made a lot of sense to buy Billy's van for cash and then move on with my life.  

I told Billy we'd buy the van when we was settled in Germany. So I wasn't planning on getting it for a month or two. The van was parked at our friend Maddie's house so there wasn't a big rush. Then our friend Maddie told Billy that she needed the driveway space soon and she didn't want to have it parked on the street for a long time. I decided we might as well get the van before the end of January. 

We were already tentatively planning to go to a hot spring on Saturday the 24th. We were talking about going to 1000 Springs here in Idaho, but in the back of my mind I was trying to figure out how to plan a trip to Crystal Hot Springs in Utah. Going to get the van was the perfect reason to also go to Crystal Hot Springs. So we decided that we'd go to Utah and get the van on Saturday and then stop at Crystal Hot Springs before driving back to Idaho. 

This was a really fun plan to look forward to all week. Especially since most of the days were cold and overcast. I was looking forward to soaking in some nice hot water.

Anyway, let's do a quick recap of the days before Saturday and then I'll tell you all about that trip. 

Monday was a pretty standard day. In the afternoon Derrick had an orthodontist appointment. He's close to getting his braces off, but we still don't have an end date. I've been waiting to schedule Veronica until we know when Derrick is done. I told her that I'll have her get them on in the Summer even if Derrick isn't done yet. 

After that appointment was over Charlotte wanted to go to DI to buy clothes for her deer costume. So I had her drive over there. Lydia came too. Later that night Brandon went with them to Hobby Lobby so Charlotte could buy flowers for the costume. 

I had a team meeting at work that evening. When I came home Charlotte modeled her deer costume. 

Tuesday was also a pretty standard day. The biggest thing was that the CSI semester has started again. Brandon went out to Burley for the first day of class for the newest round of Maintenance Certificate Students. It's a two year program. The first years come on Tuesday night and the second years come on Thursday nights. Brandon is mostly teaching on Thursdays with a few Tuesdays thrown in there. He went out to meet the new students. This will be his third year teaching at CSI. He loves it a lot. 

Charlotte added her wooden hooves to the boots and so her costume was finished. Here she is showing it off.    

You can see her tail in this picture. 

And then we put Lydia in the picture for scale. The hooves and the antlers make Charlotte so tall. 

When she went back down stairs to change she had to go down the stairs really slowly. I told her, "don't trip, I don't know how to explain any of this to the ER."

Wednesday was a really busy day. My Bible Study group had our second meeting. This week was on the details in the book of Joel. The first week had been the big picture and now we were really getting into the book. It went really well. 

That afternoon I went to the High School and met with Charlotte and Lydia and their counselor. I had a lot of questions about things like duel credits with the college and online classes. And so it was easiest to just meet with her and get the questions answered. Also I wanted her to put faces to names for the twins. It was a really good meeting. 

Then I stopped by Ivan's office and picked up the mail and talked to him for a while. The department of health and welfare has recently done some stupid stuff for OT's and so we were talking about that. The Governor is also proposing a lot of Medicaid cuts. And some state legislators made some really bad comments about people with disabilities. So it was a TERRIBLE week politically. (And that's not even counting what was going on in Minnesota.) It's just been awful. 

Then I came home and audited the December financials for the Exponent. It only took like 45 minutes. It felt good to be on top of that. 

That night the kids could have watched the World Wide Youth Devotion for their Youth Activity. But my kids don't really like just sitting and watching stuff like that. So none of them went. Instead we stayed home and Derrick and I watched Jurassic World Dominion. 

We'd tried to watch it the day after Christmas but I'd been so tired I kept falling asleep. This time I was wide awake. And I liked the movie. I kept saying, "How did I sleep through this?" I also knew the names of all the dinosaurs. Veronica was like, "How do you know the names?"  I said, "I've listened to Derrick talk about dinosaurs for like 6 months!"

Brandon spent a lot of the evening in the garage. Our goal for January was to get the garage cleaned out and functioning as a shop again instead of just a cluttered storage space. Part of that plan was to add more shelves to the garage. I suggested that he move the jeep out so that he could build the shelves a lot easier. He really took that to heart. He moved the jeep out of the garage on Wednesday night. Charlotte helped steer it out while he pushed it out. 

On Thursday Ivan was in Boise to attend some hearings or something at the capital. So I went into his office and took care of organizing the filing cabinet. I've worked for him since the summer on 2023 and we still have every piece of mail since then in the filing cabinet. I worked on moving out everything that was from before 6 months ago. I was there 90 minutes and only got about halfway done. 

Then I went to Chattertown and helped answer questions there. Andrea seemed to be getting really overwhelmed so I invited her to come watch me at Aspen Grove so she could see what it looked like when everything was running smoothly. She came this week and said that it helped her a lot. 

And then I went to Aspen Grove and tried to do all the things in only three hours. I think I need to figure out how to work more hours on a Thursday. But I think that will have to wait until Charlotte and Lydia are driving themselves home from school. 

Brandon was at CSI again that night. On CSI nights he doesn't come home after work at the hospital. He just goes straight to Burley. So we don't see him until like 8:30 or 9:00. 

Veronica's High School Musical cast was invited to go see the second cast perform. So I took her to the theatre at 7:00. Then I picked her up at 8:30. She was so so so so so happy when I picked her up. She kept yelling and screaming about how much fun it had been. Then she said the magic words, "This was the best part of my day." That's when I knew she HAD to be in the next play. We'd thought she would take a break after High School Musical, but I'd started reconsidering that decision when she was so sad after her play ended. Still, I didn't want to sign her up for another play just because she was sad. I needed another reason. And seeing her so happy and so alive after spending 90 minutes at the theatre was just what I needed to make the decision. 

So I contacted the Ovation Team and got Veronica signed up for Alice and Wonderland. Her Monday/Wednesday class was full so we were looking at either the later Monday/Wednesday class or the Tuesday/Thursday class. She couldn't do the later Monday/Wednesday class because their tech week would be the same week as her May orchestra concert. So Tuesday/Thursday it was. I'm actually feeling pretty good about this class because it doesn't start until 5:30. So that will give her some time to decompress after school.  

On Friday I went grocery shopping in the morning after dropping off Derrick. I came home and dropped off all the food and then went to work. 

In the evening we had a pretty chill night. Brandon got out his lightboard so Derrick could practice tracing dinosaurs. 

Derrick liked that. 

Saturday was our big adventure day. We left the house around 8:30 and drove down to my parents house in Taylorsville. Charlotte drove to the first rest stop and then Lydia drove to the border. 

I was supposed to be at a committee meeting for the Curtain Call Awards. I'd been sad to miss it. My friend Karin is also on the committee and so she offered to call me and have me participate over the phone. So while Lydia and then Brandon drove I was on the phone attending the meeting. Mostly I was just on mute and I joked that it was kind of like listening to the most boring podcast ever, but overall I was really happy to still be involved. Karin was running the meeting and had an agenda and kept everyone mostly on track. I was so impressed by her. She's already my hero in so many ways, but she went up in my esteem even MORE as I listened to her run that meeting. 

I was able to make sure that I'm still on the vote counting committee. And I'm still in charge of the awards back stage. This year we'll need to be extra careful with the awards because they will probably have the winners names engraved on them. 

The award ceremony is April 2nd and I'm so excited for it. 

We arrived at my parents house around noon. We'd brought everything for hoagie sandwiches. So we had those for lunch. Then the kids stayed at my parents and watched K-Pop Demon Hunters with them. Brandon and I drove down to Daybreak to Maddie's house where the van was parked. 

When we got there the van was running in the driveway. This was a great sight. The battery had some issues and had been dead, but Kyle had been able to jump it. I'd imagined us spending at least an hour taking the battery out and replacing it so this sped up our day so much. 

We were able to leave Kyle and Maddie's house within a few minutes of arriving. The van was low on oil so Brandon took the van and went to buy more oil. I drove back to my parents. 

Brandon also had the battery tested. It failed on the Crank Charge. So he bought a new one. We probably would have been fine driving it home, but Brandon had forgot to bring jumper cables and I really didn't want to be stranded in the Crystal Hot Springs parking lot later that night. 

Billy and I had already agreed on the price of the van and agreed to take off the cost of the battery. So none of this was a surprise. 

Back at my parents place things were still going well. I decided to get Lynn Wilson Burritos at Maceys. We had those for dinner. Then we left their apartment around 5:00. It had been so nice to have a place to be our home base while we got the car things figured out. The kids would have been miserable if they'd had to come along to Maddie's and then hang out in the parking lot of an Autozone while Brandon switched out the battery. 

We drove all the way up to Crystal Hot Springs near Tremonton. We got there around 6:30. The parking lot was PACKED. I'd pictured this as a little place like Miracle Hot Springs or even Lava. But no there were easily 75 cars there. 

We paid $18 per person for admission and an additional $2 per person for wristbands for the water slides. Then we went to the locker rooms and changed into swimming suits. That was a little hectic because there were so many people, but soon we were outside where the hot springs were. 

I'd imagined that I would take a lot of pictures, but I hadn't planned on how cold it would be. I think it was something like 25 degrees. We immediately got in the water to warm up. Any time we did get out of the water we would start to feel cold again within like 20 seconds. So yeah, I didn't take ANY pictures. 

But we still had a lot of fun. 

We started out in one of the soaking pools, but it was really crowded. So we ended up in the Olympic sized swimming pool. That had a lot of space. 

The kids figured out where the waterslides were. There were two. They slides had lots of twists and turns. After the kids went on them a few times they had me and Brandon go down. We had to go up a lot of stairs. Those stairs were kind of awful to climb. They were in a kind of tunnel so we weren't outside, but it wasn't warm inside there. As I went up the stairs I was like, "This is awful I'm NEVER doing this again."  I barely had time to catch my breath at the top when it was time to go down the slide. The slide was fun, but made me dizzy too. I was so disoriented when I came out the end. 

But it was fun enough that I let the kids talk me into going down the other slide. So a few minutes later I found myself going up the creepy, cold staircase again. I was like, "Wait, why am I doing these stairs AGAIN?"

The other slide was even twisty-er. I was really dizzy when I came out of it. It had been fun, but I was also done with the slides and those awful stairs for the night. 

We spent most of our time in the big pool. It was warm and felt really good, but the outside air was SO COLD. I had to keep splashing water on my face to warm it up. 

There was a dad who had four little kids all holding on to him. He'd say things like, "Hold on I'm going to turn on turbo mode."  And then start walking really fast through the water. All the kids on his back would laugh and laugh. Brandon was like, "I used to be cool like that, but then my kids got too big."  But then he was like, "Who wants to try turbo mode?"  And all our big teenagers climbed onto him and he took off really fast and the kids held on as best they could. It was really funny. 

Around 9:00 the crowds were thinning out. We went over to one of the soaker pools. It was so much warmer!  I was like, "Ohh this is nice!"  There was a waterfall and a cave. We sat under the waterfall and it was so nice to have warm water pouring down all around me. Then we went inside the cave. The water was about 4 inches deep in there. We all laid down and floated in the water. It was like a sensory depravation chamber. It was so relaxing. 

Around 9:40 we got out to get ready to leave. I was feeling amazing and then we had to walk through little puddles of freezing water to get back to the building. I said, "This is like the best of times and then the worst of times."

The locker rooms were a lot less chaotic. We changed and then met up with Brandon and Derrick. Then we headed back up a big ramp to the check in lobby. I took one picture. 

Overall I had really liked Crystal Hot Springs. But next time I want to come at in like March. I don't want the temperature difference to be quite as extreme. 

We had a few snacks in the car so we got those out. Then Brandon took Lydia and Derrick in the new van and I took Charlotte and Veronica in the old van. At the Utah/Idaho boarder the girls took over driving. Both did an awesome job. Brandon has taught them to pass trucks really well. I didn't worry at all. 

We got home at 12:45 and went straight to bed. 

I thought I'd sleep in really late on Sunday morning, but I was awake by 7:00. My body wasn't tired, but my brain was. I didn't really want to do a lot all morning. 

I had a big list of things that we needed to do with the new van. Things like registering it, getting insurance, taking it in for an oil change. But I also had "post about it on Facebook on the list." so that's where I started. 

The old van was at 298,998 when we pulled into the driveway on Saturday night. We'd added another 500 miles to it on this trip to pick up the new van. I wanted a picture of it saying 299000 so Brandon and I went and drove around our neighborhood to get the odometer to that number. 

He wanted me to take a picture of it at 298999 because that was a cool number too. 

And then it rolled over to 299000. 1000 miles away from my 300,000 mile goal. 

Then I took a picture of the new and old van together. 

And for comparisons sake I took a picture of the new vans odometer reading. 195,745. That number is incredible to me. The Honda Pilot hit 200,000 miles when we were living in Yellowstone in 2017. So it's been almost 9 years since I owned a Honda with a 1 as the first number on the odometer. 

I tried to get a picture of our "Fleet." This was the best I could do. That's the jeep parked in front of the garage where Brandon pushed it out on Wednesday. Then there is the old van. You can see the red Pilot and then behind it is the new Blue van. I'm so glad we have this paved double driveway. There's plenty of room for all these cars. For the first couple days I kept thinking, "who is coming to visit us?"

We pulled ourselves together in time for church at 1:30. In Sacrament meeting Derrick was sustained at the secretary of the Teachers Quorum. Then they set him apart during class time. Brandon and I were there for that. 

After church we had Jori and Tim and their kids over for dinner. A few weeks ago Brandon had been like, "Hey let's have Jori and Tim over for pie." And that turned into pie and dinner. We each made a dip to share. Jori and Tim brought spinach artichoke dip. And Brandon made 7 layer dip. Those were good for dinner. And for pie we made an apple and a lemon meringue. (I say we, but it was all Brandon. I didn't even look at these pies until he was done cooking them on Friday.)

Jori's kids love playing with our toys. One of her girls lined up all the horses. This looks a lot like what my kids would do. 

And that gets us all caught up for the week. Thanks for reading.