Wrapping Up

Well, we're back home again. Bob flew back to Ohio on Saturday and spent most of the day at the base auto hobby shop. He replaced the oxygen sensor and the brake pads, and he changed the oil. The "check engine" light is still on, but we think the problem is fixed. We're not taking it back to the dealer just to have them charge us another $100 to turn it off!

We left Sunday morning to drive to Bob's hometown in PA. We had a nice visit with his parents. His brother Paul and his family came over too. It was great to see them again, since it has been several months. One of Bob's brother-in-laws also came over, bringing lots of big Christmas gifts for the boys. All the new things kept them occupied. We went back over there Monday morning. Luke and Nathan enjoyed playing checkers and Chinese checkers with Bob's dad. It was a beautiful day, and we drove out to the cemetary with Bob's parents to see the grave of Frank and Marsha, Bob's oldest siblings that died in a car accident when they were almost 5 and 3. I had never been there--it was moving for me. I wrote more about that whole situation in this post from last August . After that, we went out to eat at Old Country Buffet and then left for home. We had a good drive, and we were able to finish listening to From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsberg. It always amazes me how much more quickly a drive goes when you are listening to a good book!

We did not have such good feelings when we got home--we quickly discovered that our refrigerator had died sometime over the weekend. Fortunately, it hadn't been such a long time that all the food was smelly, but we had to throw tons of stuff away. All I could think about as I tossed out frozen vegetables, meat, etc., was all that time in the commissary and all that money that was wasted. And being 35 weeks along and emotional, it was pretty hard for me, which in turn upset the boys. Luke started crying too. Actually it could have been much worse. I don't keep all that much meat in my inside freezer; most of the meat plus almost all of the chicken and ground beef and other meals that I had cooked in preparation for the baby were outside in my big freezer. And at least we have an extra fridge out in the garage. But still . . . it's hard to throw stuff away.

So now we are trying to find a new refrigerator. Caleb, Jonathan and I spent the morning yesterday out at Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowes, etc. doing some scouting while Nathan and Luke were at co-op. Of course we discovered that refrigerators are expensive, and since we hadn't planned on replacing ours anytime soon, it is not easy to spend a lot of money on it. It looks like we are going to buy a cheap one and hope that we aren't here for too much longer. In the meantime, we are thankful that we have one right out in our garage, and we're not like pioneers, who would have had to go to the cold cellar out by the creek to get their cold stuff.