Our New Ride

Why you ask do I have a brand new Chevy Tahoe (seriously, only 268 miles on it when we pulled in and still has the protective plastic on the door handles outside) sitting in my driveway in the place of my "still pretty new to me" Toyota Sienna?  

Oh, wait, did I forget the word temporary?

Let me try again.

Our New, Temporary Ride

There, that's better.  Cause I'm sure that the honeymoon with this joker (fully loaded with even the remote start option ~ where was this baby that bitter cold week in January?) will end as soon as I have to refill the gas tank.

Back to why.

Well, it has to do with an unfortunate encounter between our (estimated) 5000 pound Sienna and an (estimated) 200 pound deer.

It happened in the wee hours Monday night (Mama always told me nothing good comes out of being out after curfew ~ you were right Mama!) on our way home from greeting my sister's family at the airport in my hometown.

While the Sienna won the war (it was horrible, don't ask), the deer inflicted some parting shots and the hood latch was bent beyond repair, the radiator was cracked, and the fan for the cooling system was broken in three pieces.

The good news is that two of our three children slept through the entire incident.  And the third only woke up because I screamed.  Thankfully she has bad eyesight on the side and most likely didn't see anything.  So that means that no humans were even remotely injured (well, Ian and I were a bit emotionally injured ~ that's a visual I just can't shake).

AND the van was running so we just kept driving.  (I mean, what else do you do when you hit a deer while traveling 55 mph on a deserted highway at 12:45 am?) 

AND a hitting a deer does not count as collision, so no points will be put on our insurance.

AND we have a low deductible right now, so $100 is going to cover all the repairs which include a new fan, radiator, bumper, fixing the hood... (over $1800 at this point).

AND that while I drove around town for three days in the warm spring weather it didn't go ahead and overheat or lock up the engine.

The bad news is that we don't carry insurance to cover a rental car.  Ugh!  There went meeting the budget for April...

(Oh, and yeah, we know the Tahoe is not the cheapest rental out there.  But you tried to rent a vehicle at last minute notice for a holiday weekend lately?  We took what we could get!)

At least the kids are getting a big kick out of their seating arrangement!