Paid off = BROKEN

That is what I kept telling Jason...we paid off our van loan with part of our tax return and I knew that meant something would break on it. Isn't that always the way? As soon as you pay something off, it breaks. Or, as soon as you get some money built up in savings, something major happens and wipes your savings back out. It's like, Murphey's Law or something!

To be fair, we have been having a little trouble with the van for several months now...but it just started getting worse and worse. Let me set the scene for you:

Yesterday, we drove to Granite to have lunch with Jason's mom and his grandparents. We weren't intending on a long visit, just chat at lunch, hit a real-sized Walmart for groceries and head home. If only it were that easy...after lunch, the van wouldn't start. I don't mean a problem with the engine or anything like that (thankfully). The key just will not turn. At. All. Same problem as usual...but, usually we can get it to turn after some serious jiggling. Nope. Nada.

Jason calls a friend who is a tow truck driver (Ugh, I'm already thinking about THAT bill...) But luckily, this nice man told us a little trick to try. His oldest daughter used to have the same van, and apparently Chrysler makes bad ignitions. The trick works and we are able to drive the van to the local repair shop (Jason's entire family all uses the same place, so it was kind of lucky that this happened while nearby!)

This little adventure turned our "Short and Sweet" lunch trip into a whole day ordeal. We sat around for a few hours at Jason's parent's house with the whole family, which was nice. But Jason apparently wasn't planning to stay for dinner, so I asked WHY we were still there...we still needed to get to Walmart and hopefully make it home at a decent hour. That didn't happen either. We made it to Walmart around 6, and Emilia did pretty well for being hungry and missing lots of her nap...then the drive home and Emilia was in bed by 9:30! We have been getting her to bed by 8, most nights...

We are still waiting to hear how much this will cost us, but Jason thinks it will be rather pricey...to fix it they have to take off the steering wheel and something else just to get to the spot to look at it. So, Jason just gave them a list of a few other things that we wanted to have checked out anyway...I have a bad feeling! (Don't we always when dropping a vehicle off for work...it's never cheap!)

Moral of the Story: Don't ever pay anything off unless you're ready to have it break down! (O: