*The Rhoades*: Good timing and great blessings

Well, this past weekend was quite the whirl wind. As stressful as it was, I couldn't help but thinking of the blessing we kept seeing. As many of you know (through facebook). Friday night, Preston and I were driving home from the Mesa temple from seeing the Christmas lights (which was beautiful by the way) Then we went to dinner and life was good. Nice date night with Preston. As we were driving home on the freeway, our car did a little 'jerking' movement and a couple seconds after, all the lights on the dash came on. I was in a panic. Luckily, Preston is the calm and cool one... I'd be a wreck without him! The power steering went out but Preston managed to get us safely to the side of the freeway. I just kept praying that no car would slam into us. About an hour later, the tow truck came. As we were waiting for the tow truck, we were going over our options with the car since it's an older car and had about 133,000 miles on it and just the weekend before, we had put a few hundred dollars into it for repairs and that's not the first time we had done that in the last little while.

We got home safely and got the car dropped off at our house.

Next morning:
We call a tow truck and get the car to the mechanic. After we dropped it off at the mechanic, we went home, and had a feeling we need to look at new cars. Before we went out, we said a prayer that we could make the best decision on what we would need to do about the car situation.

Well, many hours later, we got a call from the mechanic saying our car's timing belt broke and since we were on the freeway going fast, it did a lot of damage to the engine and would need a few thousand dollars in repair. We hung up with the mechanic and decided the best thing to do would to buy a new car. We said another little prayer to confirm that the decision we made was the right one. We got a comforted feeling about it. So, we told the mechanic to hold off on repairs and we would find a way by Monday to get it off their hands.

Longer story short... We bought a new car Saturday night. It's a beauty. It's a 2010 Mazda 3 with very low miles and it's in almost perfect condition (other than it not being brand new) It's a certified car which goes to show, it is in pristine condition for being a used car. We got a killer deal on it and got an awesome package to go along with it like free oil changes for 3 years, 24-7 roadside service also free. a100,000k or 7 year (whichever comes first) bumper to bumper warranty . And, many other perks. The car also has traction control which will be great in snowy weather for UT.

To Yesterday (sunday):
Preston called the guy who towed our car to the mechanic because he was interested in it since it was very clean and in good condition other than it not running haha. He is buying our car later today for a pretty good deal considering that it doesn't run.. so we scored there too.

Here is where the timing comes in.. We had booked our cruise which now we aren't going on due to buying a new car and we had until this Tuesday the 13th to cancel the cruise and get all our money back and since I hadn't booked anything else like plane tickets and excursions, we were able to put all our cruise money towards our car. If it was any later in the week, we would have been out quite a bit of money. Also, we're driving to UT next week for Christmas.. can you imagine if that would have happened driving there in the middle of nowhere in SNOW?!?! I'm also so glad Preston was with me and the one driving when the car had it's melt down. I would have wrecked the car for sure.

We were definitely blessed and watched over this weekend and guided to making the best decision. As bummed as we are that we can't do the cruise, we're really happy with our purchase and LOVE having a new car! I just kept reminding myself that this is just a little trial and that everything would smooth over. Once we get the Ford off our hands tonight, we'll be good to go! I'm definitely grateful for how much we were watched over and that Heavenly Father had all this happen at perfect timing for the situation.

I know this is super long but I just can't get over how perfect the timing was and that this didn't happen driving to UT and that we weren't out all that money for our cruise.

Well, I probably won't update again until after the new year as we will be enjoying all our family in Ut and Mt and having a white Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!