Bye Bye, Jetta. Hello, Car Shopping.

Here's a picture of our dear Jetta, just before she was sold in Evanston.


July 1. Moving Day, part two.

We met the moving truck at our storage unit and got everything unloaded.

Over the next few days we worked on getting Maude taken care of. Maude is our 1988 Toyota Camry and our only car, as we sold the Jetta before we left. Maude had not been the same since we changed the tire in Indiana, so we took it in for a tire balance. Turns out the tires were 10 years old and not so supple, so they had come apart inside, thus the shaking of the steering wheel. It's really a wonder they didn't blow out on our long trip.

Oh- total miles: about 1390

So we got Maude some new tires, we explored a little and tried to get to know our way around, we tried a new church, and we looked for another car.

On Sunday we visited McGregor Baptist Church, where Beth and Rico attend. They had an amazing patriotic service! It's big-- like a Baptist Willow Creek but not that big. One really cool thing they did was to have the choir sing the songs of each of the branches of the armed forces. As they sang, the people who had served in each branch came forward, so by the end the front stage was filled with service people of all ages. It was really something to see the church honor those who have served us. I wish more churches would do this.

We spent the Fourth of July mostly inside sleeping. I guess the exhaustion of packing and traveling caught up with us, and we didn't really get up and at 'em until about 5 p.m. We swam in Ralph and Chris's pool and watched tv. Nothing too spectacular, but better than being outside.

By the way, the weather is really something. It rains every day for 10 minutes or so. The forecast on TV makes it look like everyday is a torrential downpour, but it's just a short shower and then it's done. The temperatures are in the 90's, so not much worse than Chicago, but the humidity makes it feel like we're swimming outside. Kath can hardly bear it, and gets cranky. Brad is ok with it, but we'd both rather be inside.

On Tuesday we went car shopping. We happened to find an obscure road that had dozens of used car lots! We stopped at more than 25 different lots to see what they had to offer. At the beginning of the day we didn't really know what we wanted-- maybe a pickup truck, maybe a Toyota or Honda sedan. By the end of the day we were pretty sure we wanted a Honda Accord. We have yet to find one. After 12 hours of looking through lots we came home, where after talking with Ralph we learned that we need to have proof of Florida residency (can't get that until we have a house) to get insurance, which we need to get a title. So even if we found a car now, we couldn't get it. Argh. Wish we'd done our research, but we had a really fun day. Although this transition period has been a little hard, it has been fun for our marriage. We're in it together, and we're having fun with it.