Bad luck and bad quality pictures

The kids had a great time doing swim lessons this summer. One day, about 20 minutes before we were supposed to leave for swim lessons I decided to make a smoothie. When I went to get strawberries out of the chest freezer I realized that everything was thawing. So I had to quickly clean out the freezer and try to fit everything into the inside freezer. And then, in my hurry to get to swim lessons, I spilled my smoothie all over the van, which Steven had just cleaned and shampooed the carpets in two days before... Luckily, after I had tried switching the switch at the circuit breaker, and that didn't work, Steve figured out that we were able to just plug the freezer into another outlet (of course, I was in such a rush and panic to get everything cleaned up before swim lessons that I didn't think about that...) so we didn't need to get a new freezer. 

Another piece of bad luck was that our windshield cracked (two weeks before the transmission went out). About two years ago we had a chip in the windshield. We had the chip treated so it wouldn't crack. However, that treatment isn't a guarantee, just a precaution. So, I went out on an particularly hot and humid day to find this large crack spreading across the windshield. We had someone out to fix it a couple days later, and luckily they came to our house to fix it so I didn't have to haul it (and the four kids) into a shop.

It was pretty fascinating to watch. Here's the guy putting the new windshield in.

 And my last piece of bad news is coupled with some good news. I found a brand new mandoline slicer for $3.99 and couldn't resist the bargain, so I bought it and was so excited to try it out that night on some zucchini. Somehow I sliced the pad off my pinky finger. After 3 1/2 hour, it was still POURING blood. So we called our home teacher, who's wife is a nurse practitioner, and they came to our rescue and bandaged it up before I passed out from blood loss (I've never been one to shy away from the dramatic).

Let's hope that between these minor things and the transmission on the van, we'll be in for some good luck pretty soon!