Erin Franco

Introducing: The Francos’ new Swagger Wagon (and a Really Old dining room table)

Humble Handmaid

Sometimes, God chooses to make changes or work situations out in the Franco household with something close to lightning speed.

Case in point: Within a two-week period ending today, He put it on our hearts to sell our Mazda 6, donate our old Montero SUV, and buy a Honda Odyssey. And as of today we’ve done all three of those.

We identified a person to donate the Montero to on Monday morning; 

The Mazda 6 sold on Friday afternoon; 

And we drove to Baton Rouge on Friday night to buy a beautiful Honda Odyssey on Saturday morning.

God has provided so well for us, and we are humbled and grateful. We just paid off our Mazda 6 and we were able to get a little more for the car than we paid for the van, which works out really well financially for us. We are still waiting on God to provide us with a reliable, inexpensive little car to take Michael to and from work and meetings, but we have a couple of doors that seem to be opening for us on that point as well!

It’s been an exciting week to say the least. 🙂

Below are some pics of our beautiful new Swagger Wagon. It is a 2004 light blue Honda Odyssey with leather seats, heated seats, automatic open and close doors, a DVD player with a remote and two headsets, numerous fun buttons that do all kinds of neat things, and the amazing move-chairs-around-and-fold-the-seats-and-store-things capabilities of a transformer (those alien robot things from the cartoon and the movie a while back with Shia Lebeouf).

 We’re THRILLED with it!

 
Your first glance at our new dining room table! AND the amazing fact that, between our new van’s amazing transformer abilities, and my husband’s amazing packing abilities, we fit a full dining room table and six chairs into the back of the van! 
My aunt told me she wanted to give me this table back at my wedding, but we haven’t had the room, or more recently the get-it-to-Houston logistics,  to actually go and get the table from her. It was neat how we realized we could actually go get the table this weekend because we’d have a car big enough to take it back to Houston, plus another car to take Gabriel and our luggage back with us. 
God is good with logistics 🙂
The table is actually certifiably Really Old, having been purchased my paternal great grandparents for their 25th anniversary. How wonderful is that? I am so blessed that my aunt wanted to give this set to me. It probably needs a little loving (in the form of some wood glue and refinishing) but even as-is it’s just a really beautiful, really well-made piece of furniture…I am so excited to have such a special dining room table for my family and friends to eat around now! Family meals and conversations around the table are important to me, and I want to give that gift to my children and to anyone who shares a meal with us at our home, whether it’s pizza or Chicken Cordon-Bleu. 🙂
Too bad the toy room/dining room will have to share space with the table now, but with my new Very Few Toys Out strategy, I think it will work out space-wise anyway. Gabriel is doing so, so, so much better now that I have only a few toys out at a time and I rotate them frequently. More on that later. Maybe. 🙂
Here’s me, my cute mom and Gabriel at the storage place where we went and picked up the table this afternoon. We stuck Gabriel in the truck bed while we transferred his car seat and packed up the table, and he was so adorable standing in there and smiling over the top at us. 😀
  
Michael and Gabriel trying out the DVD player and headseats. 

 Gabriel just couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of the Swagger Wagon…He’s just like his father.
 
Funny face…just because 🙂

P.S. If you don’t get the Swagger Wagon reference, it’s probably because you haven’t had the unforgettable pleasure of viewing the following YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-N3F1FhW4. Enjoy 🙂


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