Day.... ? LOL... A Whirlwind Weekend...

4/16: Wowza... what a weekend...
Last Friday the tub guy, David, came to refinish the tub. Wait, let me back up a bit.... Thursday night we drove into town to Pizza Hut, WM and Lowe's. As we were leaving Lowe's we heard a horrid sound and pulled right over. The serpentine belt was shredded. Gone. It was rainy and nearly storming and 9pm and we had no one we could call locally. So we called Traci, she lives 30 min away from WM in the other direction of the 30 minutes away that we live.  She came and got us and we all packed into her Suburban. The next morning as David was unloading I told him Tony would be right with him that he was on the phone calling the tow company. As I explained what was going on David quickly said "Stop him!" So I did. David said he knew how to fix the serpentine belt and that as soon as he got the first part of the refinishing done he would go with Tony to town to replace the belt. The tow was going to be $70 and the dealership was going to charge around $200 to replace the belt So Tony and David headed to town, got the new belt and David found the problem that caused the belt to shred. A pulley had gone bad. So they bought the new pulley but David did not have the part to install it. It was such a busy day and they thought it would be fine to wait a day or two until Tony could find the right ratchet to change out the pulley. After all, it's probably been bad for a while, right?

Are you still with me? LOL

So it's Friday in my house, the packers are on their last day of packing the house, I have to keep up with what goes with them and what we are taking (remember we are about 6500 lbs over what they will pay for taking), David is working on the tub. Packers and David left, Charlotte came by for a goodbye hug, the Realtor dude came by with paperwork for me to initial and sign and we had received an offer via email from someone we don't know to stay rent-free in their little rental house in exchange for doing some work there so Tony wanted, for that reason and because we needed to get our truck up there, to go to SC for a quick weekend. The plan was to leave around 5 and get there around midnight. We did not get out of here until nearly 7 and we did not get there until 3:30 am. It was an incredibly difficult trip there. I was so.very.tired. Only the Grace of the Lord got me there... and I am very serious. I have never, ever had such a difficult drive, I was so sleepy... We got to the hotel, got checked in and konked out.

Saturday morning we drove over to the post office to set up a po box there. We got lunch and Tony made contact with Joe (with the old farm house for rent) and Kelly (with the freebie rental in exchange for work). We went to look at Kelly's house. It's a sweet little not quite 900 sq ft, two bed, one bath right down from their house. They are a sweet, sweet Christian family :) [ I put an ad on Craig's List that we were looking for a place and that's how she contacted us.] The house was not that dirty but the previous tenant did smoke. Ugh. Remember two of us are allergic to smoke and it's so hard to get smoke out of a house... So we went to look at the old farm house. Oh people... I do not even have words to describe this place. Suffice it to say we decided to take Kelly up on her offer... ;)

Where was I? Such a long story... is anyone still with me? LOL We drove out to the Nine Times house because we needed to do some measuring for a)the pool fence and b)the drive entrance to make sure an 18 wheeler can fit in the entrance and have room to maneuver in the yard. What a precious blessing I received... my three favorite things in the world, yard-wise are Magnolias, forsythia, and dogwood trees. We knew there was a magnolia beside the house but now with spring springing there is a small forsythia bush and a dogwood tree in the yard.  So sweet...

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the BK right outside of the hotel parking area and heard that, now familiar, whakerthump. Yep, shredded serpentine belt. The children and I walked back to the hotel and Tony and the boys checked out the issue. Tony had an extra belt but did not install it at this time.

The next morning they put the new belt on and drove to Pep Boys to have the new pulley installed (that they had purchased with David on Friday). PB put on the new pulley and belt. On their way back to the hotel from PB... yes, you guessed it... whakerthump! The new pulley disintegrated and the belt shredded. So, Tony had the van towed to PB and they put on two new pulleys and a new belt. They did not charge for the pulleys or their labor, Tony had already purchased a new belt. Go Pep Boys! There went our Sunday, we were going to leave Sunday but decided to stay until Monday at this point so we could clean the rental some before we left.

We spent Monday buying kennels for the dogs, beagles, chickens, having them delivered, we assembled them and Tony and some of the olders worked cleaning the house. They got all the walls wiped down and the kitchen and bathroom cleaned and then we were out of time and had to head back home. We got here around 1am.

We have quite a bit to do here before we can actually move up there. Praying we can get it all done in the next few days. Monday is his start day and we really want to just make one more trip up there so we need to get it all done ASAP. I'm guessing we will move up there, unload the Uhaul into the storage space (rented while we were up there) and check back into the hotel (they love us there LOL) for a few days while we/Tony gets the new place painted. What a whirlwind!