New Van

It's been an exciting day. The biggest news of the day is that Corey bought a new van for us. It's a Honda Odyssey. From my fishing for recommendations on facebook, the Odyssey was the hands down winner. And I've heard stories of the Honda Odyssey for over a decade. When we bought our very first van, I remember a neighbor showing me her Odyssey. I also have a vague memory of hearing a John Bytheway joke about how there is a Honda Odyssey in heaven waiting for every faithful mother, haha. So, I've reached true motherhood status now - I drive a Honda Odyssey!

 And it's a great car. Corey did all the leg work, I just told him that my mother, my sister, and most of my friends on facebook say the Odyssey is the one. So, he found a great used 2015 model with 23000 miles, silver color, he signed for it, and all I had to do was go pick it up. The dealership was in American Fork. So after Mel got home from school, I had her drive me down and then she turned around and drove home. I picked up the keys, they pulled it up for me, and off I went too. I stopped at the grocery store on the way back.

After a quick run into the store, I came back out and now came my first test - how to start the car. I couldn't figure out how to do it. Yes, I saw the big red button to push to turn it on, but I pushed it, and pushed it again, and no running engine, it just turned power on and off. Hmm. Instead of googling it I just called Corey. "Hey, so I stopped at the store and now I need to start the car. How do you turn it on?" He confessed he had had the same question. Ah, I gotta have my foot on the brake. Ok. That worked. Corey said he googled it earlier and that didn't help him, so he had to swallow his pride and ask the guys who work there. Yeah, we're a little behind the times, our old car used a turn key of all things. So with the car now on, I left and soon arrived at home, where the kids were waiting to see this new addition to our family. They all ooh'd and aah'd as they looked around. So clean! So nice! So new! Look at how the seats slide and fold, and tuck into the car base, wow. I love the huge trunk! We might actually have room for stuff when we take our next road trip or pack for a family vacation. They squealed with delight when Corey pointed out the sunroof! And a dvd player! YES!! They were so excited, Corey joked to me "It's like taking them to the dollar theater..." They don't realize how common this is and prob how deprived they've been to NOT have had a dvd player in their car in the year 2018, but we enjoyed their excitement.

And Abi won the prize with her comment "No maggots!" Corey "That's actually pretty standard in most cars nowadays..." Yeah, the Chrysler had some maggots once when we took out the benches to give it a good vacuum, and down in the part where the seats lock in place, there were lots of kid food leftovers, and maggots enjoying them. Pretty gross. Thus we established rule #1 for the new van - Absolutely no eating in the van. You got it, you messy kids?!? NO FOOD ALLOWED. They agreed.

So we all sat in the van for a few minutes. Pretty fun. Then Corey took them on a drive around the block and let them stick their heads out of the sun roof, yay fun.

So that was the big news of the day. Smaller news is that our big caterpillar tried to turn into a chrysalis today, but it failed. This guy didn't make his silk pad yesterday, and last night when he went to j-hook, he kinda was more of a long j, kind of an S shape. It looked like he wasn't doing it right, and Abi asked what we should do to help it, but there was nothing we could do but let nature take it's course. So it started to turn into a chrysalis around 11. The shedding/molting usually just is a 1-2 min process, but this poor guy was struggling for 10 min... I tried to pull his antennae to see if I could help him get out, but it just broke right off, doh, poor guy. So I said a prayer for him and put tissues around the base of the milkweek to catch him, just in case he did get out - since he didn't have a silk pad to poke into. Over an hour later at 12:30, he was still struggling to break out of his skin....

Two hours later I checked on him again, and he was still writhing, trying to get out. The middle black skin around his neck was too tight on him though - he was stuck. He wasn't going to make it. I felt bad for him, but decided to put him out of his misery...

So I took him out in the back yard and did a simultaneous squishing and burial of him with a big stepping stone rock.

And now it's a butterfly in heaven, hopefully proud of himself that he finally got out of that uncomfortable position (with a little help from me.) I'm kinda worried/curious as to why we only have had 3 eggs this year and haven't seen hardly any monarchs. I hope their doing ok, despite the poor showing this year in our neighborhood. So, those were the big events of the day: New van, and I euthanized a caterpillar. Other than that - we had date night out at Bandits Grill, drove the van there to try and familiarize ourselves with it. I had a good salad at Bandits but forgot to ask for the dressing on the side, so it was a little heavy. And we survived the first week of school, looking forward to the weekend.