George and I drove in to my parents' house on Friday afternoon and attended Christmas Eve mass with them at 4:30. Then we went back to their house to eat dinner and talk and open gifts with the rest of "the kids." We all had a lot of fun. And for the first time ever, we took a group photo with BOTH of my parents, thanks to my camera's remote control and my new tripod (a surprise gift from my wonderful husband :). Unfortunately, my younger brother Philip is missing from the photo. He had to work from 6:00 till midnight--he's an assistant manager at a movie theater and Christmas Eve is actually a busy night for them. (The funny thing is, you can see his senior picture on the wall behind us, so it's kind of like he's in the group photo. Weird.) But we did get to spend time with him on Christmas Day.
Along with the tripod, George also got me a thin gold ring for my right hand (I wanted one) and the Gilmore Girls season one DVD set. I can't wait to watch it! And then I'm going to buy season two! :) His gift from me was the Dell laptop he got for law school (combination birthday and Christmas gift) and a new cell phone (he told me not to get him anything else, but he needed it--he was using my old one from 2000). And we both received a lot of nice house items and gift cards from my family. We're very thankful for everything.
Even my scale gave me a Christmas present today, because I'm still at 144. I had been saving up for Christmas--working out all week and avoiding sweets until then. But my mom's cooking is delicious and it was well worth every bite. :)
The only unpleasant thing about Christmas was a phone call we received on Christmas Eve in which we were told our 1997 Geo Prizm "might be a total loss." Back on Wednesday afternoon, when NE Ohio was getting hit with a big snowstorm, George's office closed early. He stopped to buy my last Christmas gift on his way home; about 2 minutes from our house he got into a fender bender. Now, George is the most annoyingly careful driver on earth. He ALWAYS goes the speed limit, even in the driest, safest conditions. He ALWAYS starts braking a mile away (which gets on my nerves). But this time it didn't work--he hit a slippery patch on the road and, despite going only 25 mph and trying to brake for about 40 feet, he slid into a big Chevy van.
Thankfully, no one was injured; the van didn't even have a scratch. But our poor car suffered a busted headlight, a dented bumper, and a slightly bent front hood. This was George's first accident of any kind since he started driving at age 18 (he's never even had a speeding ticket or parking ticket!). I think he was more upset about ruining his spotless record than anything else. Aside from that, we now have to pay our $500 deductible and a $134 ticket for "following too closely." And we won't know for sure until we hear from our insurance company, but we may also have to buy a whole new car.
We can't figure out how it could be a total loss; the car was driveable and the damage was not very bad. I had FAR worse damage to my Civic when I was hit by an SUV that ran a red light back in 2002, yet it was fixable. The only thing we can come up with is that our Prizm was made by Geo (Toyota and Chevy) but for the past few years the Prizm was made by Chevy only. The new Prizms are quite a bit different from ours in style, so maybe they don't have parts to replace ours, or maybe the cost of doing so would not be worth it. The insurance company is supposed to call us with details in the next few days.
It seems unfair that we were finally going to get ahead financially, but now we may have to use a big part of George's bonus money for a new car. I guess that's life. We'll manage. I'm just glad he's ok. But I keep hoping they'll be able to fix the Prizm somehow.
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