Finally, a Good Story!

So, Nicholas and I have not had a good "we're so poor and destitute because we're young married students," at least until tonight. It begins a couple days ago, Thursday night to be exact, on I-25. We had been aware for a while that our Kia, the car we bought less than a year ago, would need some work done eventually, specifically on the clutch and rear brakes. Driving home after class we saw the full-extent of the needed repairs. My top speed slowly went from 70, to 65, to 55, to 50, to 45, to 35 mph, on the highway! Needless to say, we haven't driven it since.

Our other car, which we bought just after we got married, has had a number of problems, each of which has been fixable at a relatively low cost. About two months ago we noticed a small leak in the radiator, also while I was coming home from school. Since then it has gotten slightly larger, but nothing some spare anti-freeze can't fix. Today I was driving to work and the engine started to overheat, so I finished driving to work, added more anti-freeze, and called it good. As I was going to pick up Nicholas from his school, it overheated again, which is unusual, and when I arrived and checked the fluid level, I found it to be fine. Well, that means the intake valve on the car has a big enough leak that the engine no longer is able to circulate the fluid, which is a problem for driving. We then proceeded to turn a 25 minute drive home into a 2.5 hour drive home, complete with four different stops to attempt to get the engine to cool down. The third stop was when I decided to have family home evening right there and sang Count Your Many Blessings and walked to a nearby Burger King where we bought food from the extra value menu, (money is quite tight these days). We then went to the grocery store and got family night treat: a dollar bag of Cherry Sours (so delicious)! On the last stop we parked near a creek and my hero filled up empty water bottles to pour on the engine block to help cool it down faster; probably not extremely helpful, but it made me feel better. As we started to drive off, almost home, we heard a knocking sound that we hadn't heard before. Well, we got home with us and the car in one piece, which was getting a little sketchy towards the end there. It was quite a night and came home with stomachs full of junk, a fun story to tell the kids, and a car that probably won't drive more than a mile at any one time ever again...at least not without quite a bit of work! Overall, truly a memorable evening.

Oh, did I mention we are moving this Saturday and have no car to do that with?