Lemonade from lemons

The last 2 weeks have been one hit after another with our cars! We had the oil changed on our cars and an inspection done. Turns out Jason's car needs all sorts of things done with his brakes. We kind of had an idea, but I guess were trying to not think about it. We luckily were blessed by my parents with their car to drive while they are in Hawaii. We had no idea just how grateful we would be for that car! We parked Jason's car and were planning on driving the Expedition and Subaru for a while (untill we sell Jason's car). Wednesday night Jason was driving back from Greeley where he works and the subaru started smoking from the hood! After having to get it towed and getting it checked out, we found out that the radiator had cracked. $475 was the quote given to us by the repair shop to replace the radiator and hoses... WHAT?!?! I did a little research and found out a new radiator only cost $130... Really car repair shop?? $345 for an hour worth of labor? Crazy right? So we bought a tow strap, hooked the car up to the Expedition and hauled it across town in 15 degree temps on icy roads to a friends house. Luckily it was dark so we didn't see any of the nasty looks people were giving us as they passed our little rig going 15 mph :/ We made it safely and left the car to be dealt with the next day. On our drive back we passed a bunch of guys trying to push their truck out of the snow that had gotten plowed up around it. Considering that we had a big vehicle and a tow strap we decided to turn around and pull them out. 5 minutes later we were all on our way in our warm unstuck cars! The next day Jason and our friend opened up my car and did surgery on the radiator. Now we have 2 functioning cars again!
Feeling a little stressed with the big expense of having to fix my car, and driving across town on icy roads with a car in tow was immediately washed away after pulling the truck out of the snow. And a repair that was going to be $475 ended up costing way less thanks to the help of some great friends! Making lemonade out of lemons is very important to remember. We are constantly presented with situations that can put us in a funk, but looking for the positive side of it really helps big things seem quite a bit smaller. And it sure was fun playing Super Man/ Super Woman with my husband for a few minutes:)