one exciting thing after another-- that's just how we roll.

Alex just got home this past Thursday after working in the valley for 2 days short of 2 weeks. It was a long 2 weeks.
The Saturday before last (Dec.5) Alex went to the Arizona Mills Mall to do do some Christmas shopping. When he came out his suburban was nowhere to be found. Yes, it was stolen. Why would someone take it??, is what I asked myself. It's not exactly easy on the eyes. It does has nice tires and did have his dewalt tools in the back, so that's what we figured the thieves we after. So Alex called to let me know and made the police report. It was a huge blow to us. After having minimal work all year we were so happy that he finally had a big paint job to do so that we could get ahead, and now we felt anything extra would be going to a new vehicle and not Christmas and bills. It was a long night filled with worry and prayer. One lucky thing though was that one of the guys Alex had working for him had stayed later that day and had most of his paint tools, so that meant that Alex would still be able to finish the job. Yay! Alex was disappointed that he had just bought a bag 'chocolate cranberry crunch' trail mix that he had left in there.

We had no news about the truck that night or the next day, and tried to stay positive about the whole thing. Alex figured God had let them see his truck to take, and there-by saving him from a bad car accident or something. Last Monday, less than 48 hours later, the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office called to let them know they had found his truck abandoned out past Apache Junction and they would get back to him about the condition of the truck. Alex called to let me know that and we figured it would be stripped of anything that had value. We were a bit surprised and relieved to learn that it appeared to be in good condition with only a broken column. So far as we can tell they only took Alex's drill, his radar detector and a cell phone that his friend had left in there. They even left a new pack of 60 batteries and the chocolate cranberry crunch!
The towing bill and fixing the column was definitely cheaper than replacing the whole vehicle, so we feel blessed that's all we had to pay for. We also feel like this was our Christmas miracle.

Another exciting thing.

This past Saturday, since Alex had just been home for a couple days and I been working since he got home, we decided that we needed a fun filled family day. So we went up to Show Low and hit up the big stores in town, aka Wal-mart and K-mart. Then we took the girls to go see the "The Princess and the Frog". Way cute movie. We decided to start a new tradition so after the movie we headed out past Vernon to cut our Christmas tree! The road was covered in man-made speed bumps and snow. We had been looking for maybe an hour and Alex had yet to have a Clark Griswald moment (see National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation if you don't get that reference) when we hit one of the man-made speed bumps just a little to hard. The truck died and wouldn't re-start. It was just after 4 and we were about 6 miles from the highway and it cold and windy. We immediately said a prayed and hoped for a miracle, preferably one that included the truck roaring to life. But that was not to be our miracle. We had no cell phone signal so I thought we should try walking to the highway so someone could pick us up. Alex thought we needed to stay put so the girls wouldn't be cold, so that's what we did. Alex started gathering wood to build a fire and the girls could both tell that something was wrong and they wouldn't stop crying. So I gave up trying to comfort so I could help Alex. I felt that I should try my phone again, it didn't work. So I climbed on top of the truck, even though it hadn't worked for Alex, to try 911. It worked! I gave them directions to where we were stranded. I also called my dad to see if could drive out there and tow us home and before I got off the phone with him a random truck pulled up. 2 of the men were from Mesa and 1 from Prescott, and I was so glad that they had picked that day to be hunting. They tried to jump start the truck with no luck so we hooked up a tow strap and started the slow and scary drive to the highway. A couple miles into it a deputy drove up and followed us out and then after a couple more miles another deputy joined up with us too. The nice rescuers went on there way after we reached the highway and one of the deputy's was nice enough to stick around and let us stay in his nice warm car until my dad got out there.
After my dad got there he seemed to be waiting for something. So we went over to where he was to realize that he had driven into a hidden snow-filled ditch! So now our rescuer was stuck too. It is all pretty funny now. Luckily the deputy was able to pull him right out and we hooked up to my dad's truck and made the looong drive home. The girls and I were warm in his truck with hot chocolate and oranges that my mom had brought. Thanks Mom!! And poor Alex was freezing his butt of in the truck all alone. :(
When we got home we were so happy to climb into our warm beds and happy for the fact that we didn't have to huddle together and freeze in the suburban.

In the space of one week we had a second Christmas miracle. We are definitely counting our blessings!!

I'm glad we still have Alex's suburban, but I sure am sick of it and it's bad luck... :)