Bye-Bye Van!

This week we finally sold our old white van! It was quite the pain the neck. We almost sold it twice before, only to have the buyers back out at the last minute. Once we'd agreed on a price with this guy Wednesday night, he wanted to just write us a personal check. We weren't comfortable with that, so we made this deal. We'd take the check, and keep the van, title and keys, then go cash the check the next day when the banks were open, and once we had the money, he could pick up the van, keys & title Thursday evening. They wanted to do it Thursday during the day, but I was going to be gone all day at a conference, so they would just have to wait.

Well, long story short, the check was not cashable, because the guy who came to our house was not a signer on the account, he was using his dad's account, supposedly with permission, but again, who knows. So we called them up and told them it was a no-go on picking up the van. Well, they really, really wanted it, so we told them to bring a cashier's check and we took it to the bank to make sure it was good before we would sign over the title & turn over the van. Well, it was good, we signed everything over, and I've never been so glad to be done with a transaction before. We'd been dealing with a bunch of different family members, the "dad' was always calling & complaining that we couldn't do things his way on his timetable, and why couldn't we just trust him?

With all the upheaval over the van sale, Darrin called me on my phone and I ended up driving back down from Midway early to be there for the meeting with the van buyers, just to be sure nothing wierd went on.

Thursday was also stresful for other reasons. My babysitter for the conference canceled the night before, and left me scrambling. Darrin couldn't just do it, because HE was presenting at the BYU Computerized Genealogy conference in the afternoon. He ended up watching Brynn in the morning and taking her to a different babysitter in the afternoon.

And then Thursday morning Kyra woke up very sick. She spent three days on the couch with high fever, chills, headache, sore throat, cough, runny nose and red eyes. She's much better today, but missed the ward YW regional basketball game yesterday.

And today I spoke in Sacrament Meeting - my topic was "Women of the New Testament: Examples of Faith" I am glad it's over, speaking in Sacrament meeting is HARD for me. Give me a roomful of strangers and I can talk about vaginas and breasts without even blushing, but speaking in sacrament meeting gives me real anxiety!

Barely worth blogging

But I'm trying to be good about doing it weekly, so here I go...
Not much new this week - the week pretty well stunk. Too much to do, not enough time to do it all, and yet looking back, it doesn't seem like I accomplished a dang thing. And next week doesn't look much better.
And there isn't even any good chocolate in the house....
Just to liven it up a bit, here are some pictures from the day we brought home the new van:

I'm back!

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted. I've been wrestling with the new version of blogger, which so far I hate with a passion!
We finally had our UDA conference on the 24th of Feb. It was a huge success! We had 45 people in attendance, the biggest UDA conference so far. Attendees came from as far away as eastern Washington state! Here's a picture of me teaching at the conference:

(It only took me 10 minutes to get that picture uploaded and in the right place. Not loving the "improved" blogger....)
We've had quite a bit of snow the last 2 weeks - probably more than the rest of winter combined. 4 or 5 times we've gotten storms that have brought 6-10 inches apiece! The girls had fun building a "snow girl" (Complete with hair - a Thelma wig from when one of our neighbor families all dressed up as Scooby Doo Characters for Halloween) It's warm enough that most of it has melted, but there's still a good foot in the front yard (Never buying a north facing house again!)
I finally got a chance to read more of that book about the midwife. It turned bad a few chapters in and I gave up. Don't recommend it.
Saturday we took the family to the new version of the Children's Museum of Utah - I think they are calling it the Discovery Center, or something - it is in the Gateway, right across from the planetarium. We were celebrating accomplishing our goal of having every person in our family read the Book of Mormon individually between Halloween and Valentine's Day. (Brynn read the "Book of Mormon Stories" picture book that the church puts out instead) It was fun and the girls had a blast. Let's see if I can post some pictures:

The girls sitting in a Life Flight helicopter that is on the roof of the museum. It had realistic helicopter sounds, Brynn didn't like that very much.

As you can see, our imaginary son Stephen joined us at the pretend TV news studio for a broadcast.

Brynn is quite the dynamic weather girl! All three of the girls enjoyed playing weatherman.

Brynn dressed up in costume at the theater area. I asked her what she was dressed up as, and she just said "I'm BRYNN!"

Brynn's favorite thing. She wants to be a firefighter when she grown up, you know. They get to play with fire hydrants all day, after all.

Callie does not want to be a construction worker, but she dressed up in the gear anyway.

So that's what is new here. Hope everyone is doing well, and that you enjoyed this post, because it took me FORTY-FIVE MINUTES with the stupid new blogger.