A Big Weekend

Friday afternoon started with me sending the above pictured child to her first-ever sleep-away camp for the weekend.  She's at Sacramento Methodist Assembly, the same camp where her father and I met and were married.  She will get back later this afternoon, and I can't wait to hear her nonstop chatter again.  Things are a bit too quiet around her without her!

Remember the above deer-smashed car?  We (mostly Jon) have been driving it just like that since it was smashed in December.  Then we went to Annual Conference where:

Rev. Adam Hamilton was the speaker.  He was giving a list of important things for pastors to do/be/remember.  One thing he said was that pastors should not embarrass their congregations by driving around old rust buckets.  Um, what??  That kind of hit home.  We spent seven hours on Friday test driving and test driving and listening to a very used-car-salesman-y pitch for this car or that car.  We finally made it to a dealership where the sales people seemed like nice, normal folk and actually showed us cars in our chosen budget (we've only been out of debt for a month and wanted very little debt so we can get it paid off quickly again).  At 9pm, we were finally free to leave with our new car.  I haven't actually gotten to drive said car, yet, but I'm told my husband will eventually share with me.  I haven't taken a picture of the actual car, yet, but here's what it is: 

(minus the beautiful view, of course!).  It's a Reno, not quite the Cadillacs the other two pastors at our church drive, but we're still us, not wanting to embarrass our congregation (which includes the owners of several local car dealerships) but still wanting to live within our means and afford an adoption or two or three.

That deer car?  It was sold to the highest bidder at my brother's garage sale yesterday. 

Today will see us going to church and then preparing for a family dinner tonight, which I'm VERY excited includes my sister and brother-in-law from Austin!