Old Friends, Good Times!

We had some visitors today! Monca & I lived across the hall from each other in my 2nd year of university. Then in my second year she was right next door. We played a million games of crib,, ate a LOT of icecream & the odd McCain chocolate cake and had more than one water fight! She lives an hour and a half away and has even more kids than me ; ))) For some reason she spaced hers all out though and they're all different ages & into different things... that's CRAZY!!! She's in town every once in awhile for kids' doctor appointments etc but we've never managed to get together in the 7 years we've lived here. Today, she put her foot down, we were meeting up no matter what. So I thought I'd take the kids & meet her while she was at the mall. Great idea right? Nope. damn hockey! Murray's Thurs hockey started today and there was no question of him missing it. So instead, she brought her kids here and that actually turned out better I think. The kids had a lot of fun & they didn't get bored in a food court so she & I could actually chat a bit. Her daughter is the only girl so really enjoyed her visit with the mini princesses here!

While Monca was still here, a taxi pulled up. Hmmm interesting! Murray hops out... car trouble? Well that would be a bit of an understatement. He was merging into traffic and didn't notice that the vehicle in front of him had stopped and had a teensy little crash. Nothing major & he's fine, the other driver's fine but the cars need some work. In the meantime we're driving a 6 seater Mazda5 which is pretty neat. Not much cargo room in the back though so I don't think we'll be tempted to give up the station wagon just yet!

Since the carseats were all in our car at the time of the accident, they all had to be replaced so I ran around tonight to try and find the same kind we had last time, since only the slimmest model will fit 3 across the backseat! As you would expect, they don't make that model anymore! I picked a different model from the same company, found a salesclerk to get me 2 more off the topshelf, navigated 2 shopping carts through the store & checkouts & got them into the car. I went to the shop where our car is waiting for repairs/parts etc & tried to jam them in. No dice. Packed them all back in their boxes, loaded them back in the car, dragged them back in to the store for a refund & then headed to another store. I found another model by the same company and they had exactly 3 of them in stock! I grabbed those & quickly got through the store with my handy dandy double cart system & raced off to choir only a few minutes late.

With the fundraiser for the foodbank, the cantata & all the new Advent & Christmas season music to learn, we were at choir almost a full 2 hours. I was hoping she'd give us a break after all the long practices to get ready for the Memorial hymn sing. Nope, she's merciless! : ))) I was able to quickly try the new seats in the car & these ones seem like they'll work.

I have no idea how much the car repairs are going to be but we're definitely going to get our moeny's worth out of that $300 deductible! The seats were almost that much alone. I'm a little nervous about what our premiums will look like at renewal next summer....

So the expenses are hitting us a little hard this month! Plumber to retrieve jammed toothbrush deep in the bowels of the plumbing (they were here 2 hrs...), roofer to fix leaky stink pipe, car insurance deductible, and we also need new winter tires this year, the propane tank was just filled and oh, yes Christmas is coming up!!!!! This could take some fancy juggling! Hopefully we can space some of it out a bit so it's not all due on the same month's credit card bill.

In other news, there were some monkey sightings around here today...