the essence

The car, the car, the car is on fire!

Today's post was supposed to be about going to the tree farm yesterday & getting out Christmas tree! That post may come later, but for now I wanted to fill you in on the exciting happenings AFTER we picked up our Christmas tree.

Within a mile or two of pulling out of the tree farm our car started stalling out. We called Ray's dad who was getting further & further ahead of us in his truck. We completely stalled out & pulled onto the side of the road to wait for his dad to get back. We started to see smoke coming from under the hood so Ray got out to investigate. All of a sudden he yelled,

"Get the kids, the car's on fire!"

Do you know the kind of panic you feel when your kids are strapped into car seats and you're afraid the car is going to be engulfed in flames at any moment?

I moved so fast & grabbed Kate & Ray got Addison & we ran across the street.

It turns out the car wasn't actually on fire, but being in the country the grass on the side of the road was quite high. Our car must have been very hot on the bottom & it caught the grass on fire. Ray's dad got back to us & called 911 (as our phones were inside of the car). By the time the fire department arrived the flames had grown from the grass up the side of our car. It charred the side, blew out the tires & the windows busted from the heat. Exciting stuff.

(I used Ray's step-moms' camera phone to take this picture since my camera was inside the burning car)



I'm so thankful we all got out safely, that we had a near-empty gas tank and that the tree was in Ray's dads' truck and not on top of our car. Also, aside from a bit of smoke and water damage from the fire hose, all of our "stuff" seems to be unscathed. After our safety I was quite glad to get my purse handed back to me from the fireman after the fire was put out.

We're pretty sure it may've been the the transmission that went out. It's also funny because Ray was going to take the car into today to work on it. It's no surprise that our car went out, we've just been waiting for it to happen and talking about needing to get a mini van soon.

So, now that the car is no more, I can post all of the crazy things that were wrong with it:

-No a/c on the drivers side
-No windshield wiper on the drivers side for over three years (hello, rainex!)
-A busted passenger-side mirror
-All four windows don't roll down but the back two do fall down
-A busted front left headlight from an accident 2.5 years ago (not our fault but the other insurance refused to pay & our deductible was too high to do anything about it)
-Water leaks. Not just a little, but standing water in our trunk, and water pouring through spots in the ceiling where light fixtures & stuff were (I've had a friend with me when this happened, it really does pour in)
-All of the water in the car leads to...ROACHES. I put several roach trap killers in there but they didn't work
-The gas gauge is off. Once the gas gets low the gauge starts to go back up like you have a full tank. Very deceiving.

Recently, the car had started to make a funny noise which is why Ray was going to take it in. Because, with as many minor problems as the car had, if there was anything that affected driveability we always had it fixed. Even when Ray's dad borrowed our car a couple of months ago he said it ran great.

We knew overall the car was junky, though, and we were really waiting for something to happen for it to be the final goodbye. I just really didn't think that the car would go up in flames. I couldn't help but laugh at the ending, the big joke always was how bad off our car was & this just seemed like the grand finale to the joke.





After a stressful day it was nice to have an offer for a ride to church from some friends. I was able to stay for the Lord's Supper, Addison got to practice for the Christmas play next week, and I got to see old friends! The Gentile clan was in town & I hadn't seen Dave & Ashley in a year or Heather in about 5 months! Ray wasn't at church because he had to take care of the car but an elder's wife offered to watch the girls so I could spend a bit of time with my friends - without me even asking her to! It was so nice to visit, even if it was only for 45 minutes. We made a quick trip to Starbucks and caught up on life as much as you can in such a short amount of time.

Heather, Ashley & me



Seeing as this was our only vehicle, our agenda for this week, after our first busy days of work, are to find a new means of transportation!