Snow Day!

There's no school today so we're hanging out together. Jordan has a science fair project due tomorrow, the girls made me breakfast in bed (eggs and toast) all by themselves which made me a bit nervous, and Chris is just hanging out online as far as I can tell. There's not too much snow though, maybe a couple of inches, and the plow has already been up and cleared and salted the road. Either way I'm not going out anywhere today because the transmission went in Steve's van so he's taken mine into the city for work. We did find a cheap little clunker that runs ok for $700 so we're going to get it and fix it up. It's 2 tone...red and rust, so we'll be doing some body work and a few other repairs in order to get it to pass the required Motor Vehicle Inspection that's mandatory in Nova Scotia every 2 years. We will get the transmission fixed in the other van...but it'll take us a while to save up the money. A rebuilt transmission installed will run us around $2000. A used one about $900 but of course there are no guarantees with a used one and the labour to replace one is $500 per time. It's cheaper to get the little car up and running. I think we'll call it Rusty. We name all our vehicles (call it a family quirk) and Rusty is a 1997 VW Golf hatchback. Perfect for Steve to run around town in. His tools all fit, it's not too bad on gas, and you can fit appliances and coffee machines in the back with the seats folded down. If we save some $$$ on gas then it'll pay for itself eventually as well. Heck, it's supposed to get somewhere around 23 mpg in the city and 30 on the highway. Compared to the 14 mpg city and 20 highway of our van, it's going to save a few bucks in gas each week...possibly as much as $200 a month. Wouldn't that be nice! Especially given our nearly $1.40 per litre gas prices at the moment. We used to have a little Subaru Justy that Steve just loved too. Not great for driving around kids but certainly good for everything else except going to Costco :)

It's lunchtime now. I've had some distractions and the morning had flown past. Jordan's study buddy is coming over soon. Chris has some shoveling to do. Kate is doing her chores and I'm cooking up a delightful lunch of perogies baked with cheese on top, sausage, grilled onions, roasted yams and sour cream. Easy and filling for a nice cold weather meal. Dinner tonight is unknown. Either shepherds pie or fish. I'll decide later and see what I'm in the mood for.

After lunch I've got a bunch of work to get done as well as some reading, research and hopefully some writing. I'm woefully behind schedule.

It's lightly snowing again on top of the 3 inches we now have. But it's not overly windy so that's good. With the wood we've been burning recently I think we've used a couple of cords now to heat the house. We haven't used too much wood because the weather's been pretty warm and also partly because we keep the house cooler and the furnace doesn't run 24 hours a day and the house has good insulation so it holds it's temperature relatively well. Unless of course Jordan has his window wide open...which he often does.

I've gotta run. I'll finish this update later.