Life is a Highway

Life is a highway with lots of adventures. Friday afternoon we were headed up to Idaho Falls to stay with Chase's parents for the weekend. A few miles before Inkom we heard a horrible grinding, clicking sound, Chase pulled over right away and our car died on the spot.

Chase being the manly-man that he is, got out and popped the hood, then yelled for me to come look...
and the engine was on fire! Thankfully it wasn't huge so a few good huffs and puffs and it was out. We stood there for a minute to process and concluded that we were stranded. Thankfully our phones had reception at that particular spot on the highway (it's sketchy through that area) so we called Chase's parents to come tow us.

We waited for about 2 hours grateful again that I had an extra blanket, fruit snacks and water, and that the kids were relatively happy. Cal and Cheryl showed up with a car dolly and winch to tow us into Idaho Falls to their mechanic.

Saturday morning our car was declared "toast." It threw a rod and blew a hole in the engine block. Toast.

This was huge surprise to us. Even though our car was actually really old it only had 130k miles on it, which for a Toyota is nothing. We really expected it to last us a good long while. So long story short, we needed to find a car that we could actually put kids and carseats in (trucks aren't so good for that) pronto.

We started looking around on KSL and local used car dealerships and were frustrated because there was nothing remotely close to what we needed for a price we were able to pay. We decided to take our time looking and just figure out how to manage with the truck for awhile. Then my sister texted saying her good friend was selling their van. Again, long story short, it ended up being exactly what we were looking for and under the price we needed. My parents were able to test drive it for us Saturday afternoon since we were still up in IF. Chase's dad drove us down to pick it up this afternoon and we drove it home!

So it stinks that now instead of getting started finishing our basement this year, we had to buy a car instead, but it all worked out how we needed it to. And it could have been a lot worse! Tender mercies.

So now, according to a friend, we have joined the "minivan mafia!"