RIP Crazy Sally

When Thomas was born, Jared and I owned two trucks. A little Nissan truck and a full size Chevy. Now that we had a baby, I really felt that we needed a car. So we sold the gas guzzling Chevy and bought Sally the Sentra. She was a good little car. We owned her for 12 years and she had 191,000 miles on her. 

We have so many good memories with her. We took her camping.....stuffed to the gills with all our stuff. She obviously took us on many many road trips and our boys have grown up in her. She carried them around as babies and to play dates and preschool, cub scouts.....the list goes on and on.

Now, she had the "Crazy" added onto her name a few years ago. She was getting a  little older (she's a 96) and starting to have some problems. However, she also had a LOT of personality. Here are some of her quirks that made us love her so much.

* The air conditioning would go out often, but if Reagan sat in the front seat and danced....she would continue to blow cold air. I think she just wanted to be entertained while she was working so hard.

*When you stepped on the brakes, her parking lights came on

*When we fought over the radio, she would turn it off. And after we were quiet a while, she'd turn it back on.

*Her horn honked whenever the wind blew. My favorite story about that was, once Annell and I went and had a day of beauty at a spa. It was pretty windy when we left the resort. We started home and of course, Sally started honking. Annell kept looking around and finally asked, "What is that noise?" I told her that Sally honked her horn when it was windy. She looked at me kind of funny, but the she heard it every time a gust of wind came through. We laughed so hard as my little car honked ALL the way home.

*She would lock and unlock her doors whenever she wanted. Jared would work on her and leave the keys in the ignition and he'd forget and shut the door and all of a sudden you'd hear a "click". When he checked the doors, she had locked them. But, I'd lock the doors when I get into the car and she'd immediately unlock them.

*She was stolen one night. The kids who took her went joyriding and then wrecked. They ran away and left her at the scene of the accident. She was returned to us the next day. Poor little thing was fixed up as well as she could be. I'm sure she was plenty scared.

*Her transmission started to go out - and for a while I lost second and third gear. I had to start out in first and rev her up and shift into fourth.  It was great fun. Because she wouldn't let me drive slow. 

All in all, you can see that she is a car who knows her own mind. I loved her even when she would break down and leave me stranded on the side of the road. Because of what a great little car she was we had 12 years of no car payments, really great gas mileage, low insurance payments and low registration payments. But, Sally was tired and it was time for her to retire.

On Saturday we went and traded her in and bought a new car. The boys named him Big Jim. We are so excited. Jared and I were laughing at how we lived in the car dark ages because we are so happy that Big Jim has remote entry! Yikes....it is the little things that make us happy.

Danny & John were making fun of me though....they commented on how my prayers will probably go down because I'm not going to be constantly praying while I'm driving down the road that Sally will not break down, or that the air conditioner will work. I can't say I will miss that stress. John also commented that he won't have to come and rescue me anymore when the car would break down and strand us on the way to Tucson or Flagstaff. Yeah, now we can all actually ENJOY our time together with no stress.

So....I introduce you to the newest member of our family.....

BIG JIM

I'm sure we'll have just as much fun with him!