I’ve been busy, so I’ve not gotten a chance to post this. However, here we go . . .

Our worst week ever start on June 25th. We were heading to Wisconsin for our first camping trip as a family. Everybody was excited. Except for the car. We go to turn on the car and all we heard was “click click click”. Now, remember that our other car is a Prius. A hybrid. Let’s just say you can’t jump off those (actually, if you look at the owner’s manual you can, but to replace a Prius battery it’s like $5,000, so we weren’t about to try it). I found a neighbor home (which is amazing in the middle of the day), and we tried jumping. No can do. Nothing worked. Now, at this point, we are all in the van and its packed. We are screwed. I took Bill’s car and ran and got a new battery. While I was gone, Bill took the old one out. Luck was on our side at the battery store, and I bought the last battery they had and drove home. Bill puts the battery in and the radio and most of our electronics in the van were out. Bill figured it was a fuse, so we got and in the car and went.

We weren’t even driving an hour, and Madison had to go to the bathroom. We stopped at a gas station and I took the kids to the bathroom. Since we were there anyway, Bill filled up the car with gas. That ended up being a good thing. For some reason, everything worked after that. We thought we were in the clear. Little did we know –

Friday night it stormed. That wouldn’t be so bad except we were in a tent. And there were 50 mph winds. At one point, Bill and I were holding up one side of the tent. The good news is that the tent didn’t tip over and we stayed dry. Saturday night it stormed. However, Sunday morning was the whopper. Here are a few pictures:

Good times.  At one point, we were lifting the tent, so the stream could go underneath.  Sooo you’d think this was the end of it — not quite.

We get home and Madison is covered in mosquito bites.  It’s about 8:50 pm and I ran to Walgreens to get some AfterBite.  What I didn’t know was that they had mopped their floors and didn’t put up a wet floor sign.  You can guess what happened next.  I didn’t fall but I twisted my ankle (and ended up at the dr Monday to make sure nothing was broken).  But my week got even better on Tuesday.

Bill and I were sitting at dinner and he goes “Lisa, your eye is really red”.  Well, I ended up at the eye doctor that night, and I had pink eye too!

Thankfully, the rest of the week went better!

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I finally  have some pictures for you:

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Remember that Prius we went on the waiting list for back in July?  Well, we had one false start about 3 weeks ago when they told us our car was in.  However, when we got there, it was the wrong car completely!  Needless to say, we were not happy campers.  However, there really wasn’t much we could do besides complain.  Well, we got a phone call today (after we noticed the missing mailbox — see post below), and guess what they said?  No, it wasn’t for discount furniture. Our new car was in! I was still a little nervous that it was going to be the wrong one again.  However, it was the right one!  Though things weren’t as smooth as it seemed.  The car actually came in yesterday, but our sales guy doesn’t work on Fridays.  When they logged the car into the system, they actually mixed up our car with another blue Prius that came in today.  Now, our sales guy called and said it was here quite early this morning.  I was out and had to come back home.  We then fed the kids breakfast, and took them over to Grandma’s house.  In the meantime, the dealership was looking for our missing car.  From the sounds of things, they had found it shortly before we got there.  I can only imagine how bad our salesguy was freaking out.  All in all though – we got the car we wanted with the package we wanted.  We are happy campers.  It was too darn cold to take pictures today, so hopefully I will get a chance to get it up tomorrow.

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As most of you know, Bill and I have been looking for a vehicle that gets better gas mileage. Our Jeep Liberty, well, it stinks on gas mileage. We are averaging around 20 mpg, and Bill drives a minimum of 70 miles a day. Needless to say, with gas prices as high as they are, Bill alone spends over $500 a month in just gas for his car. I recently came across a site that I could have used before we put out name on the waiting list for a Prius. vLane allows you to research and compare vehicles with just a few clicks. You are able to even research different options on the vehicle that you want. If that isn’t enough, you can run a poll like the one below.

Powered by vLane.com See more | Create your own!

Now, since we are on a waiting list for a Prius, I thought I’d ask everyone their opinion on getting extra options on our Prius. If you have a question you’d like other opinion on like my Prius question, you can create your own poll. It can be listed only on their site, or you can even embed it on your blog like I have done. You can also search for a vehicle based on total price, monthly price, fuel type, fuel economy, performance, and manufacturers.  You can also see (by stars and reviews) what other reviewers of the site think of each vehicle.  If you can’t find your dream vehicle on vLane, I would be seriously surprised.

Let me know if you make any of your own polls, so I can go vote for you (either on your blog or vLane)!  Also, don’t forgot to vote on my poll!

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I have been wanting to post this since Monday.  No worries — I am not pregnant and nobody here needs a medical bracelet or anything like that.  Since my husband has had to work late the last two night, we haven’t had a chance to go do this yet.  Figured it out yet?  Well, I’ve blogged about it and asked everyone to tell my husband why we should get one of these.  No idea, yet?  Well, Bill decided (unless he changes his mind again which then I will have to kill him) that we are going to go put a deposit down on a Prius!  We test drove my sister’s car.  My only complaints have to do with things that I will just have to get use to.  As soon as we put our deposit down, then we go on a 4-6 month waiting list.  Unfortunately, we don’t get it right away, but it’ll allow us some time to save.  I really didn’t want two car payments at the same time, but what are you going to do?  The Jeep’s 20 miles per gallon is killing us when gas is so darn expensive.

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