Well, we went and did it. We now are the proud owners of a 2000 blue Chevy Venture minivan. It seats 7. This is great for not only hauling our own two teens around, but those of the youth group and the odd band member and his wife and soon to be child (Ben and Trisha). It gets pretty good gas mileage and is in great shape. There was even a remote car starter on it that the previous owner had added after market. So now Mary gets to drive with air conditioning (the Intrepid’s broke and was too expensive to fix), a steering wheel that doesn’t pull to one side, and has plenty of room to haul people and things.

In other news, we also upgraded our cellphones. We both have Motorola RAZRs. The only catch was that Mary’s old phone was still under contract for another 6 months to a year, so we decided to take the plunge and add two more lines for Karlie and Kaleb. Karlie chose Mary’s old phone and Kaleb paid $30 and got a new Kyocera that takes pictures. With Alltel’s MyCircle plan we have taken our most called numbers and added them so as to not use all of our minutes. Also with Kaleb’s girlfriend havening an Alltel mobile, they have unlimited mobile to mobile minutes.

Otherwise, after our hot streak in northern Michigan, we have now cooled off and still have bright blue skies! This is why I moved to northern Michigan in the first place. Mary has been going through training sessions at work. They do a conference call with them all doing work out of their book. This is a lot like my radar training when I first worked with the Weather Service. She still has to go to Minneapolis for a week at the end of the month.

Mary and Trisha are in the beginning stages of planning the baby shower for Trisha so stay tuned. We went with Ben and Trisha to Clare and took Kaleb with us to see The Andy Stephanic Band (Ben’s brother) at an all day event last Saturday. The 5 of us had a good time. We brought some of Ben’s drums (since he is the drummer in the band). The Van worked great for this.

Can’t think of what else to tell you…oh yeah we think we found the house we want to move into in Boyne Falls, the only thing is too see what to do about this one. Any takers on a 3 bedroom 2 bath Cape Cod for $114,000 just outside the Gaylord area?