Fun in Tennessee part 2!

After sending our daddy home, we continued to have fun with family and friends. On Sunday, Mom, Bethany, Abby and I went wedding dress shopping. Abby thought she was going just to check into things and see what was out there, but after trying on a few beautiful dresses, found her dress! We were so excited and so happy to be able to be there with her!
On the drive home from town, our minivan started driving really strangely and after calling Nathan, we decided it was best to leave it in town at my parents' auto shop. Thankfully, everyone was still in town so they came and rescued us!
The next day, we got news that the unimaginable had happened--the engine of our minivan had been badly beaten up by a rogue spark plug that had fallen out. The mechanic advised us not to fix it, saying it would be too expensive and didn't make sense. We were pretty surprised, as Nathan (our resident Honda expert and mechanic) had not heard of that and the shop where he worked had only seen it a few times in all of their years of experience.
So our van died. And then Levi woke up from his nap, crying. I went to check on him and found that he had thrown up all over his bed. Ugh. It was not a good day.
Nathan and I were faced with trying to figure out what to do while being 300 miles away from each other. After we talked, Nathan got a call from our realtor friend, Mark, who also helped us buy our van. His family's company would be able to pick up our van and take it back up to Indy, that Wednesday, and take us too, if we were ready. They would be able to look at the engine and give us a second opinion. We felt like God's hand had come down and helped us right in our time of sadness and need. We were encouraged, at least for that moment.
The next day, Amos started complaining about his stomach and after breakfast, started throwing up. He threw up all morning and then was just very weak and tired for the rest of the day.
I decided to stay in TN until Sunday, when Nathan could come and pick us up, since Amos was unable to keep food down until Wednesday morning.
I faced the thought of being stuck in the country for a whole week. I wasn't excited about it but I also was thankful that we were home (not stranded in some strange hotel in Kentucky with sick kids), with my parents (who did a great job of helping me with the kids), and that we were in such a beautiful place with space to roam and play. The weather was really nice that week and since we didn't have a car, we took lots and lots of walks! We got to see more of our family (once they stopped being sick too!) and got to celebrate Flannery's birthday with family once again! That Saturday, the 9th, she turned 3 and had a wonderful day being the birthday princess!
Nathan did make it to Nashville on Sunday night and it was a sweet reunion. We were so happy to be all together again, and were hoping to make it back to Indy on Monday until Nathan started feeling sick on Sunday night.
Yep, he got the stomach bug too and spent all night Sunday, all day Monday and Monday night in bed, sick. It was hard to accept that we would be putting off our return for yet another day, but that was the way it worked out.
On Tuesday, we loaded up the 12 passenger van that we were borrowing (which was so helpful because somehow, we had accumulated a lot of stuff!) and headed north to Indy!

It was on that trip that we discussed everything: the minivan, our housing options, our finances...
It was a stressful and difficult trip, talking all of those things over. But we felt like we were starting over and had to start thinking outside of the box for the next phase of life. The house that we had been pursuing was now getting really expensive to fix up and because our van had died, we no longer had trade-in value to upgrade our van....more later!