Another modified journal entry:

Wednesday night we got paid. Thursday night we found a van on Craigslist.com that we really liked and was a great deal. Friday I drove up to St. Louis and bought it! It is a 2003 Honda Odyssey. We really wanted a big SUV but I finally did the math and it was going to cost us $66 more a month in gas and $11 more a month for insurance. We could afford that, but then we'd have to save less for retirement and kids college. We decided to get practical and get a minivan again.

We are glad we did. It gets as good as (or maybe a little better) gas mileage as our old van, has more room, and of course it is newer. Smoother, quieter, leather heated seats, CD, cassette, DVD, etc. We do miss our 6-disc CD changer from our Mercury, and I think it's sound system is higher quality than the Honda's, but overall it's a great car.

Earlier that day I went to the bank and withdrew [$500 less than the asking price] in cash! It was pretty fun getting that much cash out of the bank. They gave it to me in $50 dollar bills and it was quite a tall stack. When I got home I showed it to Clark and said, "See Clark, this is how much money it takes to buy a car. We worked and saved a long time to get all this money." When we paid for the car, Clark and Cal were with me, the dealer's wife was counting out the money and Clark said, "we worked really hard for that money!" I'm glad he said so, because it's true.

Yesterday we went back to St. Louis to go to the temple. While Ruth was in the temple I took the kids to the temple annex and while we were in there Clark saw a lady giving her kids Gushers and of course said he wanted some. It reminded me that I needed to go to the store to get Ruth her Valentine's day present. I hadn't forgotten, but I hadn't realized the obvious good opportunity I had to get it while Ruth was in temple. So, I took all the kids to Walmart . I bought them some Gushers and Ruth some treats for Valentine's day. We each had a budget of $5.00 She said she went 0.15 over, so I went about 0.15 under (although I didn't really plan it that way). Well, if you count the Gushers I went way over, but I wasn't counting them. While I was at Walmart all the kids had to go to the bathroom. That was quite the adventure.

On the way home we picked up our old van at the dealership so we could bring it home. Our original plan was to trade it in, but I think it's more valuble to us than it's actually worth. If that makes any sense. I think it's probably only worth$1000-1500, but it works fine and if we take out the middle row and move the third row up it can be our little "truck" or utility van. We also stopped by Borders where we spent a $40.00 gift card that my mom gave us so that we could buy some books for the kids for Valentine's day. Before we left St. Louis we stopped at Little Caesar's for dinner. It was really good! One pizza and two bags of bread sticks for just under $10.00! Can't beat it!

Today church went pretty well. Ruth gave the kids their books after breakfast and of course Ruth and I each saw what we had given each other for Valentine's day. Ruth made me a candy bouquet and I made a little heart thing with some almond joys and propped it up against a bag of Lindor chocolates.

I was supposed to teach the lesson in Priesthood, but there was a miss-communication and somebody else had prepared a lesson as well. I said something, but the other guy seemed ready to teach the lesson and didn't mind. I'll teach next week.

Elden slept for almost 2 hours of church! That sure made it easy. The girls did fine in nursery too and didn't have any accidents at church. This evening I'm going to knock on the door and deliver some little treats to the kids and run away. It should be fun. Then we're going to listen to a conference talk.

Well, time to go. Clark has been wanting me to play with him and I told him I would when my alarm went off and it just did.