waiting and waiting in the car dealership

last week, we brought the van in for a repair to a rear window that, as i described it, had fallen off the track.  it didn't make me feel that great when they said that they had never seen that before. uh-oh. so we spent almost two hours to learn that they were going to need to call toyota for approval for the repair under warranty and order an entire new window (it is a single piece and the plastic clips had broken). so we came back today for the installation of the new window and take care of another, non-safety related, recall.

i had come prepared last week and was loaded up again today. i made the boys spend the first hour drawing, using stickers and word searches. but then we broke out the ipad. i used the timer on my phone to give them each a five minute turn before passing it off to the next one. it worked out much better than you would have thought. in fact, we had several other people come over and praise their behavior. i was pretty impressed with them myself, especially when we started to head into hour three! they took another break from the ipad and spent some time watching the swamp people marathon that was on the t.v. in the waiting room - and they had a million questions about it, many of which i couldn't answer.

i started to get a little nervous as we started getting closer to the time we needed to be home to meet madelyn's bus. when they came to give me an update, i had to make some quick choices. they hadn't yet gotten to the recall (something with the backs of the chairs). apparently, the window had been quite a job that they said will be outsourced if it happens to someone else. they offered me a loaner car, but it wouldn't fit all of the carseats. they wanted to know if i wanted them to keep going or come back again. i did not want to come again so i started trying to get ahold of neighbors who might be able to get madelyn off of the bus and called the school to find out what i needed to do to approve the substitute pick-up (they don't let the kids off the bus unless a parent or other appointed person is visible). after a few attempts, i found a neighbor who could meet madelyn at the bus stop and called the school again to give her name for the driver.

it turned out that they couldn't do the recall because of all the carseats and wanted me to bring it back another day. sigh. on the plus side, i found a solution to my egg dying plans for next year - marshmallows! so all and all a very successful trip to the dealership. and madelyn was spoiled rotten by our neighbors with applesauce, cookies and hot chocolate for snack. she was a little sad to have to go home. love.