My life flashed before my eyes yesterday, again. It’s happened several times over the past 18 months or so. I guess this is just another dose of reality. Our BAV is exactly what our family needs for the long run. I hope and pray that we’ll have some enjoyable life moments with this BAV. I’m sure we will; it’s just really surreal seeing that thing sitting there in the driveway. We’re hoping that we can get the kids to 10 years old before we need to upgrade again.
Our ’08 Chevy Express has about 26,000 miles on it. It has a full ton of towing capacity and can handle up to 15 passengers. However, each row of seats will hold just two car seats so we needed at least three rows of seats. There are four rows of seats in this BAV, but I’ll be removing the last row of seats so that we have some storage room for bags, strollers, groceries and all of the other crap that we’re gonna have to haul.
Now that we have the BAV, a few things are going to be set in motion soon. We can’t last much more than a year or so in our current home. Angela reminded me yesterday that in 1 year from now, we’ll have 5 more Meredith’s running around. We need a bigger house and we need it soon. We’ll likely have our home on the market in the next couple months. Now that we have the BAV, we can pack everyone up and leave if we need to so that we can show the house to a potential buyer. We can also make a road trip. We plan to visit our families this summer. The details are TBD, but we’ll hit both Rock Rapids and Tama this summer.
We bought the BAV at Moody’s here in River Falls. I want to thank Randy Leonard at Moody’s. Randy helped us with the purchase of our Impala a few years ago and we wanted to keep our business local. Unfortunately, these BAV’s just aren’t on any dealer’s lot. An extensive search was done to find the one we wanted. There were only a couple BAV’s available within a few hundred miles of River Falls. Randy located a couple options for us; went to the other dealership where it was located and drove it back for us. I test drove the BAV on Friday while Angela rode shotgun. She couldn’t drive because of her bum leg. We went back yesterday afternoon and had it home in the driveway by 4. Thanks Randy and thanks Moody’s.
It’s been a long time since I’ve put up some pics so here are a couple from the other night. Somehow, Alex found his was in to the toy basket and Meredith couldn’t stand to not have some of the attention too so she climbed in while Alex was getting fed.
I drove a BAV (Big Ass Van) yesterday. Holy crap it’s huge…20 feet long huge. Surprising, it rode really smooth and handled very well. Outside of a wide turn or two and intersections, it handled very much like any other car. It isn’t in the driveway yet…
There’s a rumor floating around in River Falls today.
We’ve heard that there’s a Big Ass Van sighting in River Falls. It’s not in my driveway…yet.
We’re taking any and all suggestions on a personalized license plate? How ‘bout, “OUR BAV.” I’ll share some of the best recommendations with everyone in an upcoming post.
Until then…
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 6:04 pm. Add a comment
I am trying desperately to update the website and add some photos and videos so please bear with me. It takes a lot of free time and I don’t have any.
This weekend was a good one.
Angela got out of the house for a little girl time and got her toenails done. Thank you Karen Swenson for taking my wife out of this house for a while!!! Here’s the first picture of “The Purple Boot.”
My parents (Oma and Opa) were here and helped get a lot of things accomplished around the house. Thank you both so much!!
The weather was great and the kids (mostly Meredith) had a great time. Meredith played hard and she has the bruises and scratches to prove it. The quints were out in the yard a few times. They really enjoy it and love the swings we have hanging from the deck. I may have to get another one or two.
Angela (Hop-a-long) and I got out of the house to run some errands on Saturday afternoon. We had dinner at one of my favorite spots, Buffalo Wild Wings. Our waiter said something to me that just took me aback, but I decided to take it in stride. What other choice did I have really? Over the past couple weeks, Meredith has told every person that she has seen: “Momma fell down the steps. She got hurt. Momma broke her leg. Momma got a purple boot.” Some people just giggle at her, some look at her and turn the other way, and others look at me like I’m some kind of wife beater and one actually asked me if momma is okay. Well, Mr. Funny guy at BWW’s was just trying to hold a conversation and asked Angela what happened. She told him that she fell down the steps. Without skipping a beat, he looked at me and said, “That’s what they all say.” Smart Ass. Guess I had it coming.
I’m gonna finish this quickie with a note of thanks. The volunteers here have been wonderful. We’d be lost without you. I have a video below of a day a few weeks ago when one of our volunteers, Monica Schack, came to give us an extra hand for a few days after Angela broke her leg. Monica came nearly every day after work for a couple weeks to help us get through the dinner time feeding. On this particular day, she took Meredith off our hands for awhile so that we could tend to things in the house without any distraction. You can see all of our videos by clicking here.
I’ve tried to write tonight’s post on 3 different occasions, but had some major writers block. My friend Dan told me recently that it sounds like I’ve been pushing Jell-o up hill. I’ll be honest, he’s right. As an example, a few nights ago, I went upstairs for Meredith on 3 different occasions and once with the dog because she needed to go out to pee. Guess who wanted to play in the yard at 3:30 in the morning? Not me. As I was trying to get out the door for work that morning, Angela let me know that the dog threw up on the floor in our bedroom right next to the bed. Argh!!!
Not every day is horrible, though. We had a great moment tonight. From time to time if we need to occupy the kids before their final feeding of the night, we blow bubbles. Kinda gay, huh? I blow bubbles. Anyway, those bubbles will keep the kids happy for 30 minutes or so. We gave Meredith a spill proof bubble container for Easter so we blow bubble in the house and everyone has a great time. Tonight Meredith insisted that she do it herself. She’s really trying to be independent with everything she does. She took the plastic stick, placed it right to her lips, but couldn’t get a bubble. As she took the stick away from her mouth, she exhaled. A big giant bubble appeared around her lips. That image was worth a million bucks and gave mom and dad a very much deserved laugh. We needed it.
The kids are all doing really well. They’re a bit behind developmentally, but that’s to be expected and we’re not really surprised or too concerned at this point. They’re not crawling yet, but can get to something if they want it bad enough. Madeline loves to walk around the house with assistance. Many, but not all of them, are babbling; lots of da, da, da, da, da’s. Alex is clapping. Emma and Madeline each have two teeth. The others do not have any. We are still going with scheduled feedings, four of them per day. During three of the feedings, the kids are getting baby food about an hour prior to their bottle. Oh Dear Lord, how the kids are eating the baby food. We go through about a case of food per day. There are 16 packages of food in a case. We expect that to only increase with time. We’ve talked about making food, but with Angela’s bum leg, that’s out of the question for now. This past weekend, we ordered 39 cases of baby food from Wal-Mart. We hope that this order will get us through a month. We’ll likely switch the kids to whole milk in the next month or two so their food intake will need to increase. Angela joked today when they were choking down peas that they need to get better at eating their food or we won’t be giving them any of their birthday cake.
Yeah, she referenced a birthday party. Do you believe that in less than 2 months, the kids will be a year old? Angela and I have finally made some decisions on their birthday and we’ll be announcing that to everyone very soon. We have a few more details to work out first.
Not much else to talk about other than a little story about our friend Jill Lubich and her big brain. For those who do not visit our home, we have a split level home. The upstairs is devoted to “baby land.” At the top of the steps is a very sturdy baby gate. It has a latch on it that some may describe as “challenging.” Others may describe it as a pain in the ass. I would go so far to say I think one or two of the women who come here may have lost their religion trying to get that thing open. Some don’t even try any more, they just ask for help or just step over it. I’ve seen my father do that too. So last week, I decided to fix it. I took the cover off the latch and ultimately the entire thing came apart. I gave it a little squirt of WD40, got it put back together but I couldn’t get it to work. Son of a B—-! Meredith was starting to need my attention so I rigged up the gate with a bungee cord until I could come back to it. Later that week, Bud Ayres, one of our volunteers, saw the cord prior to entering and asked Angela what woman shot it. She got a laugh. So this past weekend Jill Lubich walked in, saw the parts lying on the counter, looked up, and asked, “A puzzle?” It didn’t take long for Jill to have that thing together. She was able to point out my mistake. I had a piece turned upside down. Wow, look at the big brain on Jill! Seriously, that was it, a piece was turned upside down. So here you go…mark it down, I messed up and a woman fixed my mess. It was still difficult to open, so I had to do a little rigging with some parts from my fish tank and some epoxy. That thing is smooth now; probably easier to open now than the day I originally installed it. Thank you Jill for helping me fix our gate.
That’s it for now. I’ll try to get some photos and videos updated this weekend.
I’m so sorry for not writing more often. It’s just so busy here. As an example, I started the first sentence of this post prior to 8 am and its now 9 pm. Running “The Machine” is a nonstop operation from before sun up to past sun down. I have several topics to write about (Jill, I’ll get to you and your big brain in the next one) and plan to get to all of them this week, but tonight just won’t work. I have a very full day at work tomorrow. I will have people from our North American Headquarters here in Minneapolis and also someone from our worldwide headquarters in Denmark ride along with me on several sales calls on Monday and Tuesday. I have some prep work that I have to get to tonight and I must be up early tomorrow.
…but, I want to hit on this very important point before I get back to “the machine.”
Today is Mother’s Day and I want to wish all of you moms out there and all of our adopted moms here at our Tille house a very Happy Mother’s Day. You make the world go round. God Bless all of you!!!
Until next time…
Posted 1 year, 9 months ago at 8:51 pm. Add a comment
