Our van has been leaking antifreeze for several weeks, with increasing intensity. We finally took it to a local repair shop (one recommended by several coworkers of Scott's) and asked them what it would take to fix it.
They came back saying that it would take at least $700 to replace some leaking gaskets on the engine.
Scott immediately said, "I don't think so!"
His dad is a mechanic and we decided to take the van to him. We had only one free weekend before a planned road trip to Indiana. That was this weekend. Scott's brother had already planned to bring his car up to work on. So we knew that Scott would have to do the bulk of the work.
We planned to leave as early as we could on Friday so he could start tearing it down that night. We had to return home Saturday night because of multiple commitments on Sunday.
I began to get this really uneasy feeling about the whole thing. Finally I decided that I needed to arrange for people to cover our responsibilities in case things went wrong. Having tackled a few projects around the house and seen first-hand how things always take longer than you think and things always go wrong, I knew there was a good chance the van wouldn't be done in time for us to get home Saturday.
I spent most of the morning Friday emailing, calling, and preparing everything for Sunday (we usually do this together on Saturday). This was on top of packing the entire family up for an overnight. An overnight that might be a weekend.
We dropped everything off on our way out of town. It was a big relief knowing that we didn't have to do anything when we got home.
Scott and his dad hit the van disassembly hard Friday night - they spent about 2 1/2 hours on it. I went over Saturday morning for a few hours so I could actually spend some time with Scott. Things were going well at that point. The guys came home for lunch and then headed back. I stayed with the kids and took a nap. The guys knew that we were having dinner at 6pm.
By 6:30, there was no sign of the guys. We fed the kids and kept talking about how they must be almost done or they'd have stopped to eat. Finally, about 7pm, Scott's brother called and said that they'd "hit a stump" on the van and might not be coming for dinner at all. He was done and came home to grab a bite and head back to his house. Turns out, during the process of putting everything back together, they had dropped a switch down into the engine and covered it up. It took them 2 hours to take things apart, find the switch, and put it all back together.
Meanwhile, the weather forecast was getting worse and worse. Our home was in an area of a winter storm slated to get "wintry mix." This phrase is very bad news for travellers. It means ice. So now I knew that not only would we get a late start back home, but the drive would take at least twice as long because of the poor road conditions.
So I launched Plan B. It was easy - sent an email out. Scott made two phone calls when he finally got back after 10pm. The van was done, but he was totally exhausted from working 12 hours straight in the cold.
We went to bed before 11pm.
Elli woke up coughing at 1am. By 2:30am, I realized she wasn't going back to sleep. I got her up so she wouldn't keep disrupting the other two kids. Around 4am, Scott and his mom came out and took over for me. Elli didn't get back to sleep until 5:30. She was miserable and began running a fever that morning. Sam woke up coughing like a seal. We were SOOOOO glad that we hadn't tried to drive home that night.
Oh. How much did we save having Scott and his dad do the car repair? Our total bill was $225, and that included new spark plugs and an oil change and filter. So we saved over $500. Have I got THE BEST husband or what?!? (Oh yeah, and a great father-in-law... he worked as hard as Scott and provided the tools, covered semi-heated workshop, and brain power. He actually said, "Don't you DARE spend $700 on that!" when we told him what the repair shop said.)
So that was my weekend. I do believe that the winter sick season has begun in our family. I'm taking my zinc, washing my hands so much they are dry and cracking, and doing my best to avoid the germs flying about the house. Now I better go to bed since Sam is probably going to wake up in the night with a bad croupy cough and a fever and need some attention.
