Got our taxes done this week. We, umm, took a big hit due to taking money out for the kids' tuition. We got bumped up into a higher tax bracket.....and we have paid our fair share!

Valentine’s Day was officially owned by me this year. I thought maybe I should rock it because I kind of blew her birthday, and it went off without much of a hitch. Without letting her know what we were doing, and to keep her from getting mad up front I told her that I had made plans for us but I wasn’t telling. I got a card and some flowers and chocolates and massage oil and brought a bottle of wine that Laura and Thomas gave us for Christmas and a couple of glasses, took a motel room in town for the night, and dropped the things off in the room before going home after work on Wednesday. Then I went home to pick her up to take her out for coffee and then sushi. Then we headed towards Ritter’s and I pretended to miss the turn in and went into the motel parking lot instead. Then we went to the room and spent the evening watching movies and doing other things. Fun story: when I went to check in, the lady at the front desk told me that their elevator wasn’t working and we were on the 2^nd floor, and was that ok? Well, since Beth had knee surgery not long ago, it really wasn’t. She then spent a long time trying to figure out where they could put me on the first floor, but there were several rooms that they had vacant but they didn’t want to put anybody in because of an upcoming inspection. Don’t know. Anyway they finally decided on a room to let me have that had one bed instead of the 2 I’d reserved, but I decided we’d be ok. And we were.

Friday I got the van to Ab & Tom’s, having missed the appointment last week because the van was trapped in the garage at the time. Unsurprisingly, it needs front end suspension work. Probably that’s why it has been creaking and groaning and clanking under there so much. New front struts, sway bars, tie rods, and other auto-y stuff… gonna be about $1750 altogether. I have to bring it in some other time because they need to wait for parts to come in. Speaking of the van being trapped in the garage, I had a service tech from Safe-Way come to the house this week to fix it. It only took an hour or two for them to replace the spring and get everything working again, and the door now goes very easily and rather quietly up and down. I did notice that the fracture surface of the garage door spring was rusted on both sides, which I take to mean that it was broken for quite some time. Which could explain why it’s been screeching as it goes up for so long. I should have known.

Saturday was the ATS labs’ Christmas party at work. Late, I know, but they decided to go to a hockey game for their party and this was the best time. I’m not actually in ATS, but since I work with them all the time I was invited anyway. We went to see the Komets play the Cincinnati Cyclones, and the game was up and down. Evenly matched 1^st period (down 1-0 after 1), wheels coming off in the 2^nd (down 4-1 after 2) and a furious, relentless attack all 3^rd period but just could not get the equalizer through (lost 4-3). Since Beth still probably cannot do the concrete steps at the Coliseum, I asked around with some friends and took Bob with.

Missy was home again this weekend! Most notably, because on Saturday we all went to Wabash to see Cary Elwes speaking at the Honeywell Center. I went to pick her up on Friday after work again, again without Beth since riding in a car is still too painful. And it was inconceivable that Beth and I wouldn’t take Missy with us since we didn’t do so for Josh Gates a few months ago.

The show itself was a lot of fun. In the pretty much sold out Ford Theater (not the Eagles Theater as I had thought) a crowd of people who can all recite all the lines gathered for a screening of the movie “The Princess Bride,” followed by Cary Elwes (Westley/Dread Pirate Roberts) speaking for an hour or so about stories from the making of the movie. Especially stories about Andre the Giant.

The van became trapped in the garage for a while this week. Starting sometime in the middle of the week the garage door opener was unable to raise the door entirely, and when I pulled the cord to disengage the door from the opener, the door went slamming down and landed with a mighty crash. At that point I couldn’t miss seeing the broken door spring, which undoubtedly was why the garage door has been making such screeching noises lately. I couldn’t raise the door by myself, not without hurting my back badly I suspected, so I got Trey from work to come by and help me raise it long enough to get the van out on Friday evening.

And oh yes, the Super Bowl. Since Missy was home this weekend, and Beth still isn't much for driving, it fell to me to drive Missy back to school on Sunday and miss the Super Bowl, even with the Niners in it. Well, we left Warsaw a few minutes into the game, enough for me to see the Niners fumble away a promising opening drive. By the time we got to the dorm, it was just past halftime with the Niners leading 10-6 and her roommate had the game on tv. I looked. And the Niners immediately fumbled away a punt, and it went downhill from there. They lost in overtime just before I made it home. It's my fault, I shouldn't have looked. Dang.

Missy was home this weekend! She texted Beth a few days ago asking if she could come home just because she missed us. I left a bit early on Friday to get her so I could have her here in time to go with Beth to the church women’s ministry “5 favorite things” party. She came home with a few chocolates and trinkets and such, so did Beth.