Memorial Day Weekend Memory Making, Dahl style

If I were writing a book, this weekend would need its own section because a chapter just wouldn't do it justice.  In the interest of actually keeping your interest long enough to read all of this, I'm going to make it as short as possible.

Key points: we traded a car, we took a short road trip to Greenville, SC, we placed flags on the graves of veterans for Memorial Day. 

Point 1 - the car. Last year, we purchased a 2014 CR-V from Apple Tree Honda. That experience was so bad - so very, very bad - that neither one of us ever really liked the car. That's pretty ridiculous. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the CR-V, but in our minds it was a constant reminder of a very bad experience. 

Last week, we got a car sale flyer in the mail. Normally, I just dump those right in the recycle bin, but Sara had grabbed the mail and noticed that there was a chance to win a prize on the back. If you scratched off the box and had three in a row, you won. She scratched off the box and had three in a row for a $1,000 gift card from a local grocery store. 

Upon reading the fine print, though, getting 3 in a row only guaranteed you a chance at the prize. Still, we at least had a real chance at it, so why not? I went online and checked out their inventory of vehicles to see what they had and a couple of them caught my eye. I showed them to Robert. He was non-committal, but agreed to go and check it out. We certainly weren't thinking we'd buy a vehicle. My plan was that he could check out the different types of trucks they had in stock and see what he liked, since he's in the market for a truck in the next year or two.

However, there was a Honda Pilot on the lot that grabbed our attention. We looked at it, we drove it, we drove different one, and then BAM! We traded in our CR-V for the Pilot for a truly great deal. Oh, and we did win with the scratch off, but instead of a $1000 grocery gift card it was a $2 bill. But hey, we still won. 

Which brings us to point 2 - road trip!  Sara had spent the night at a friend's house, and we went to pick her up on our way to Greenville. On our way to pick up Sara, we stopped by CVS to return some movies to Redbox and grab something to drink. Robert and Tucker handled returning the movies, I went in for the drinks. It was sunny so I had my sunglasses on, which are prescription. Then I realized I looked like a doof wearing sunglasses indoors, so I took them off and then fumbled through finding and buying the drinks for everyone. When I walked out, I saw a large black vehicle in front of CVS. 

"Wow! That's really nice of Robert to pull around!" I thought. 

I had left him parked on the side of the building near the Redbox kiosks. I still had my sunglasses in my hand and I opened up the door of the vehicle, getting ready to slide into the seat. "I forgot to switch my glasses before I...." I started to say. 

A man, who was not Robert, looked at me (which what expression I have no idea since no glasses = no vision) and said very loudly, "HEY! EXCUSE ME!" To which I smacked my hand over my mouth in horror and apologized profusely whist backing away from the non-owned vehicle as quickly as possible. 

I scurried to the vehicle in which my husband was actually waiting and told him what happened. I was mortified and couldn't bring myself to even look at the other car as we left. Oy!

Point 3 - We got up this morning and went to put flags at the graves of veterans in a local cemetery. Because it was work related, Robert wore his ABUs. Flag planting started at 8, the ceremony was at 10. All the flags were distributed by 9:15, so we were going to walk back to our car and wait until it was time to walk up to the ceremony. There was a car parked close to ours that looked almost exactly like ours. As the kids and I walked to our car, Robert headed towards the other car. "Where are you going?" I called out.

Sara planting flags with her actual dad

He did a double take and jogged back to us. "I was going to get into that other car" he said. 

Been there, done that! It was sadly comforting that he did it too. It didn't even matter that it was our other car and not the new one. ::ahem:: 

Fast forward to the ceremony. Sara handed out flags and poppies to the people in attendance and once it was over, those of us walking back to our cars all started off together. One of the guys that works with Robert was walking near us and had grabbed a doughnut to eat on his way back. For all intents and purposes, both men were wearing the same outfit. At least from a kid's perspective. Sara was so focused on the yummy doughnut that she wasn't looking at his face. So she fell into step with him and was ready to grab his hand when he spoke and she realized it wasn't Robert. She jumped back and scurried over to me. Everyone was a good sport about it, including Sara, even though she was super embarrassed about it. 

"Don't worry," I reassured her,  "it's probably genetic". She didn't find the humor in that, but Robert and I sure did. 

It's certainly been a memorable Memorial Day weekend!

Moving right along...

After two years in our rental house, we recently moved into an apartment. Our lease was up and the home owners decided they were going to move back into the home. We knew this was coming a year ago, it's just a little shocking how quickly the year passed.

Now, I'm a born procrastinator. It's true, I own it. But the housing market where we live is nuts. If you can find a house that has features you want, in the location you want (or at least can accept), and within your budget range, you'd better jump on it. If you hesitate even one second, that house is rented before you can sign your name on the application.

When we first knew we were moving to this area, I think there were 30 or so houses available that we perused. This year? Three. And two of those were kinda sketchy looking. So, we started to look at apartments. To our great surprise, we found one we really liked that also had a 3 bedroom available right away. The property managers were great when we met them and the complex has a lot of amenities *and no yard work*. Apparently the stars were aligned correctly, because BAM! Here we are, all moved in with very few glitches in the process. This is almost unheard of for us. It's almost too good to be true...

And then R got notice that PCS orders were pending. Where are we headed? North Dakota. North Dakota is a looooong way from here.

Sigh.

So now we get to start the whole process over, only from 1600 miles away. I can't decide if this is my reward or my punishment for not procrastinating.

New beginnings are always good, right?