Insurance, Vans, and a break from it all in Waterton

The past week has been extremely busy with all the 'stuff' resulting from the hail storm.  We've had multiple phone calls, visits, appointments, etc to sort out insurance claims.  Thankfully, my mom and dad let us borrow their van.  Even though our insurance covers a rental vehicle, there are no rentals to be found!  Pretty much the entire town is driving rentals (at least that's how it feels). 

Last Saturday, we went in to Lethbridge to look at vans (just in case ours got written off).  We found one that we really like, but we couldn't do anything until we knew for sure what was going to happen with insurance. 

Tuesday (the 31st), we had the adjuster for our house come and tell us that we will most likely be getting a whole new roof, eavestrophing, and siding.  We will also need to replace our barbeque, the kid's Power Wheels jeep and their water activity table.  It's a little overwhelming thinking of re-doing all the stuff on the house when it feels like we just barely got it all done!

On Wednesday, we had the adjuster out to look at the vehicles.  Again - it depends on what the insurance says, but in his opinion - both vehicles will be considered a 'total loss'. 

Thursday, after many phone calls on Lennard's part, we found a van in Calgary.  We had put in an offer on the one in Lethbridge, but they wouldn't budge on the price.  The one in Calgary is the same year and a few more kilometers, but it is the model up and has way more features.  We ended up piling the kids into my parent's van and heading to Calgary after lunch to go get the new van!  It was raining like crazy, so I ended up spending most of the time in the dealership, while Lennard went and test drove the van and checked everything out.  I got about five minutes to look at it, but Emma wouldn't let me put her down the entire time... so it might as well of been no time at all!  We got a decent deal on it though, so hopefully it will be a good van for us.  It has almost 100,000 kms LESS than what our van that got smashed had, so we'll at least get a few more years out of it!

Friday we got a call from our insurance company telling us that they had deemed our van a total loss.  Since we'd just bought a new one the day before, it was a relief to hear them say that!  It was an even bigger relief when they told us what they would be giving us for it.  We will still have to put money out for the new van, but not nearly as much as I was expecting to!

After all that, on Saturday, we decided to take a break from everything and go to Waterton for the afternoon.  It wasn't really great planning on our part, as it was ridiculously busy in the park because of the long weekend, but it was fun anyways.  We took the kids to the splash park initially, thinking that they would have fun there, but they wouldn't have anything to do with it!  We then went down to the lake and Emma was ready to go swimming if we'd let her!  Brrr!  That water is so cold!  She had a blast!  Ben didn't want to go in the water, but he had fun throwing rocks and wandering around.  I brought my camera along and tried out some different settings... some worked... others... not so much.  At least I'm trying though - right?!