A little insert

(Written on August 16th)

First, a few things I wanted to chronicle from June that didn't make it in. Btween June 10th and 26th, some interesting and exciting things happened!

June 15th We took a trip to Phoenix and got in a visit to the temple. It took us a while to get going in the morning, so any thoughts to visit people in the afternoon didn't work out, but we got in our temple visit! We really needed it. My dear friend Tiffany was so sweet to watch the babies for us. Her kids are practically the same age as ours, and they had a fun time together. I LOVE that my friends I've known for so long have kids the same age as mine. It really brings us even closer together.

We also went to a birthday party for another friend's daughter. It was really nice to spend the evening visiting with my Phoenix girlfriends - definitely makes me miss them, though!

After the party, we stopped by and visited with Daryn's mom. Daryn also gave his dad a Father's Day gift. That story, as much as I want to record, will be in my journal, as it was a very special moment for Daryn. We were very happy with the end result. :) Gary called Daryn on Father's Day to thank him for the gift, and the letter that came with it. He also gave us a very generous offer:

So we've been thinking about cars lately. Daryn's truck will not properly fit 3 car seats (especially with one or two rear facing) and while 3 carseats DO fit in the Fusion, it's a pretty crowded fit. I've wanted a mini-van for a while now (perhaps later I'll rant for your about people who don't want mini-vans) but mini-vans don't lose their value! Used, they are still very expensive. I'm convinced it's because almost no one sells their van - it mostly gets used until the van dies. Because of this we were looking at selling the truck and using that money as a down payment and then just having payments on the van. But even then the payments would be pretty big, so I briefly toyed with the idea of selling BOTH our cars to get the van. THAT would have amounted in a reasonable monthly payment, and it would have reduced our car insurance etc. I told Jeanette what we were thinking, and asked that she and Gary help us look for a reasonably priced minivan - they find great deals all the time. So after Gary was done talking Father's Day with Daryn, he asked how much we thought we could get for the truck. Then he told us that if we could get that much, we could turn around and give them that money for their Expedition! Daryn says that since they have around the same mileage, and the Exp is a year older, KBB says they're about the same value, but that truck was SOOOO beat up, and we know the Exp has been very well cared for, so it is definitely a step up! (More on that later.)

So Saturday June 16th, was CRAZY busy! We went fishing with my sister Kati and her kids, then the kids napped and then we went to our friends the Romney's for lunch, and that afternoon we went to Ft Huachuca to visit our friends who couldn't come up the week before. We ended up staying the night and had just a great time. I felt bad that I ducked out early to go to sleep. Priscilla was super sweet and help put Josiah to sleep because I just could not keep my eyes open! I was glad we got to visit with them, because it had been nearly a year since we'd seen Merrick, and they're moving to New York soon. :(

That next week was nice. I changed Rebekah's swim lessons to the Flowing Wells pool so we could go at 9am, and we had a few people from church at the pool with us. We also had our last Investment Club meeting, since our friends the Strattons were moving soon, too. Then there's the weekends I've talked about in previous posts.