What a Day!

This has been quite the Saturday! After getting up and ready and doing a few chores around the house, we loaded the kids and headed to my parents house. We found a screw in our van tire the other day and my dad said he could fix it, so we went out there to take him up on his offer. When we got there, he invited us to go to a carnival at the Rio Tinto stadium with them after he fixed our tire. Of course we said yes, so after lunch and a fixed tire, we headed over. We decided to park at the Mt. Jordan middle school parking lot because it was free, so we made the long, hot walk to the carnival, which was a lot of fun! I was surprised that all my kids did so well! I even took EmmaLee on a little roller coaster, the ferris wheel, and she went with Isaac on a little car thing! Because it was so hot, there was hardly anyone there, so we didn't waste any time in lines or anything! We had been there about 2 1/2 hours when we decided we were done, so we started walking back to our cars. My kids we tired and hot, and the long walk back took almost everything out of them. We finally found some shade on the other side of the school, so Rob and my younger brother and sister stayed with my kids while my dad and I went to get our cars. We got to the parking lot, but my dad's car wasn't where we thought is was suppose to be. We thought that maybe we were wrong about where he had parked it, so we wondered the parking lot looking for it, which didn't take long because it's not that big of a parking lot, and it wasn't very full. We were kind of laughing at the idea that somebody must have stolen it because for those of you who don't know, my dad is good with cars, so my whole life he has always bought old, used cars that he fixes up until they literally are beyond any kind of mechanical help. The car we were looking for today was a bright teal 1984 Ford Festiva. We couldn't understand why someone would steal it! But, we figured that must have been what happened because it was not in the parking lot! I made my dad call my mom just to make sure before we called the police she hadn't for some random reason come and picked it up. So, my dad was talking to my mom, who had not come to get the car, when he suddenly asked me if he had been parked right next to me, to which I said I thought he had been. He told me to look at that parking space, and it was all black, with little blackened debris all around. Had his car caught on fire?! My dad started to mention that we had been parked right by each other, so if his car had caught on fire, wouldn't my car have been damaged as well? Right before he finished his sentence, we saw my rear bumper and tail light and saw that they were melted! I haven't mentioned this yet, but what makes this even more salt on the woundish is that we have a new van that we haven't even had for a month yet! I don't think I've said this yet, but we have taken out bankruptcy, and one thing that happened when we did this is that we lost our other van. A lot of times you are able to keep your cars in a bankruptcy through what is called a reafirmed loan. We were planning on doing that, but we found out that the lender we had the loan through, who is also who we had a couple of credit cards through, wouldn't let us reafirm that loan without reafirming all our loans, which would have made bankruptcy pretty much pointless, since we owed the most money to this lender. So, we voluntarily gave up our van. We cannot legally fit all three of our kids into our Geo Prism, so we figured we needed a family car still, so Rob's mom very kindly helped us get a new van. She took a loan out for a new van, so we are just making payments to her until our bankruptcy is over and we are able to get a loan in our names. Because we are hoping to use this van for a very long time, we got a 2006 Chrysler Town and Country, which ironically is pretty much the exact same payment as our old 2000 Toyota Sienna. So, like I said, we haven't even had this van for a month, and now the rear bumper and tail light are totally melted! Anyway, back to today's story! So, we realized after seeing my car that my dad's must have caught on fire and burned, but where was it now? So, we called the police station and told them where we were and what we thought had happened, and sure enough, she said they had gone to a vehicle fire at that location earlier in the day, and she gave me the name and number of the auto body shop they had taken my dad's car. I guess they had tried to call my parents house, but nobody had answered, so they left a message. So, luckily, our van is still totally driveable, so we all loaded into it, and drove to the body shop, which was closed and told us we would have to come back on Monday to see the car, so we don't even know what it looks like yet! We also finally found a police report under our windshield, which had the time of 2:45 on it. We had arrived there at 2:00, so the fire must have happened right after we got there! All that commotion it must have caused while we were blissfully enjoying the carnival, completely unaware that one of our cars was going up in a major fire, and the other was getting melted right next to it! Crazy! And, to have to get to the parking lot and have figure it all out ourselves was just weird! I talked to my dad tonight and he was talking about how he didn't loose a dime in that car. He bought it like 4 years ago for $700, put 50,000 miles on it, which he figured cost him 1 cent a mile to own and drive it. He thinks it was well worth it! I just laughed! So, if I can, I'll have to get pictures of it and post them just to show what it looks like now. It made for quite the day! Oh, and luckily my parents do have insurance, so we will be getting our car fixed. What amazes me about our car as well is that it wasn't more damaged! There is about a foot of body of the car between the bumper and the rear light that doesn't even looked touched, yet the light and bumper are melted! I'll have to take some pictures of it and post it as well, as soon as I figure out how! Why do weird and crazy things always happen to us?!