First Week of School

Anna started kindergarten last week. She of course loves it. I took her the first day and walked her into class and hung out for about 10 minutes before she said "you can leave now, mom." so big. I made it to the car before I cried.

She took her lunch the first two days and bought her lunch the other days. She gets to choose from chocolate, regular or strawberry milk and I think this is her favorite part.

On day three they hit us up for a fundraising project. They waste no time huh?

Apparently parents are assigned a day to bring snacks for the class and on the second day someone brought fruit snacks. Anna knows she can't have these because of her crowns but I guess she was really sad and started crying. Her teacher wrote me a nice letter and asked us to send some "back up" snacks for next time. The teacher said there were lots of hugs and she found a granola bar from the previous day to give her, so it turned out ok. When I asked Anna if she cried she said "no." She acts so tough.

The first night when I gave her a bath I noticed a red mark on the back of her neck. When I asked her how it happened she said that she was backing up and ran into a desk and then fell down. She said it was bleeding but her teacher had some napkins. I asked if she went to the nurse but she said no. I thought this was strange. Two minutes later she said very matter-of-fact "That's not true. I just made that up."

I finally figured out it was from her "necklace" that says what bus she should get on. I think she had been pulling on it from side to side and gave herself a small rope burn.

She says "It's just like daycare, mom." and tells Carter "I know everything now that I'm in kindergarten."

By the way - she does her own hair and insists on putting those barettes directly on top of her head. It's driving me crazy.

Worlds of Fun

Worlds of Fun has a great deal right now where you take a canned good and get in for $25. My brother Ben and I took the kids to WOF on my last Thursday with Anna before she starts kindergarten.

The only part that sucked was all the train rides were closed that day. They loved the kiddie roller coaster and we also did the log ride, taxi cars and they did the kiddie bumper cars. It was hot but we had a good time.

They were the only kids on a lot of rides, which was nice.

I remember doing the Beetle Bumps when I was little.

Motorcycle - pink.

After we drug them out of Peanuts Playhouse after about half an hour.

Inside Peanuts Playhouse

Mini ferris wheel

Horses

Camp Snoopy

The year of unexpected expenses

This has definitely been the year of unexpected expenses for us. First the air conditioner then the kidney stone then the lightening strike then my car. Luckily they miraculously didn't charge me anything for my car. Probably because they didn't do anything. They tightened a wire on my battery and gave it back to me.

I felt like they might as well have said, "good luck, see you next time."

whatever. If you were going to get a new car what would you get? I was hoping to drive this one more year and then get rid of it but it might not make it that long. So far I'm looking at the Mazda CX7 which seems to be less than my current car even fully loaded, or the Ford Edge.

Anna starts kindergarten in one week. OMG! Every morning she asks how many more days until kindergarten. The countdown is on.

Brake Failure Stop Safely - Volvo S40 2004/2005

On Tuesday the 28th I went out to my car and didn't quite turn the key for long enough to start the car and it set off the error codes it sometimes throws up. "Immobilizer See Manual" and something about the ABS brake system. It wouldn't accelerate more than 5 miles an hour around the parking lot. It also did the usual "System Engine Service Required" and "Reduced Engine Performance" and "Brake Failure Stop Safely." It seems to do this about once a year but it's highly annoying. I did get it to restart but then the air conditioning, electronic windows and wipers wouldn't work. Then after running for a few minutes all of those kicked in.

Kevin came to meet me at the office and it became driveable and I followed him home in his car. The next morning it didn't have any error codes and I figured it would be fine for another year. Then as soon as I pulled into the office parking lot it said Brake Failure Stop Safely again but it was accelerating so I just drove it to the dealership. They didn't start looking at it until 4pm and didn't have enough time to figure out what was wrong with it so I ended up picking it up at 5 so I could go get the kids and all they said was "It has a lot of fault codes." No kidding. Brilliant.

Again the error codes were now reset so it was driving fine. Then on Thursday when I had both kids in the car and was trying to get on the highway in a construction zone it said Brake Failure Stop Safely again and wouldn't accelerate so I pulled over as far as I could but it was really scary as semi's are flying by me at 65 mph in a construction zone where people are trying to get on and merge and could easily just run into the back of me. Again I called Kevin and he came over and I had had it turned off the entire time (which by the way made the hazards NOT work so even more dangerous).

When he arrived the car of course restarted and just said Engine System Service Required but was driveable and fine so I went on. I've made an appointment to take it in tomorrow morning and I told them....

Keep it for awhile so you can figure this out. Tell me how much it's going to be to fix it. I will then decide if I am fixing it or getting rid of it.

This has happened at least four times before, so now a total of six times. I don't think I should have to pay to fix this since it has clearly been an issue for a long time and started while it was still under warranty.
21 January 2009
04 June 2008
11 October 2007
13 September 2007

At this point I'm not really thinking about getting another Volvo. Although I must say we have not had any problems with Kevin's XC90. Hopefully I didn't just jinx us.