Product Review: Ella Ola Unflavored Vitamin Powders

Quick Disclosure here:  I am not sponsored by Ella Ola and have received nothing for my review of their products.  I am just using them currently and wanted to give my honest opinion of a product that I believe is helping my kid.

Here's something I promised a while ago (a long while ago, I'm sure).  I said I'd do a review of a few products that I've been using that I've found to be really helpful.  Well, here's some of them.

I stumbled across Ella Ola on Facebook.  The algorithm worked well this time and actually influenced me to check it out.  When I saw, "unflavored vitamin powder" I was definitely intrigued, but honestly really dubious.  I'd fallen for the trap of "unflavored" things MANY times before, only to find that they were far from what they advertised themselves to be.  They also said that the powder would mix in with anything, so that really intrigued me as well because most powdered anything says, "absorbs easily into smoothies, yogurt and applesauce"....yeah, if I could get Alvah to eat anything mooshy and smooth like that, his diet would be a lot better than it is, I assure you.  I always tell people, "Give me something I can hide on a Cheeto or dissolves in Coke with no flavor and we'll talk."  That usually shuts down any conversation people start up on how to hide nutrition with me, unfortunately.  Someone on the Facebook comments said that they dissolved their grandson's powder in WATER and that he couldn't detect it...that sold me to at least try it.

When I researched Ella Ola, I got my doctor team on board to check them out and see what they thought of the vitamin breakdowns before I slapped down a hefty amount of money every month on vitamin powder (the company doesn't really seem to have a "try it" pack...you have to subscribe to the service and then you can cancel the subscription if it doesn't work for you).  Both Alvah's mental health doctor and his pediatrician were both really happy with what the vitamin powder had to offer, so I decided to try it.  

I can't speak for the other vitamin powders as I have just used the teen unflavored vitamin powder, so keep that in mind when you are looking at them for yourselves.  But, what follows is my honest review.

First, I'll cover the unflavored multivitamin powder.  First thing to note with full honesty:  No, it is indeed NOT flavorless.  At least to me, but I've learned to have a really sensitive tongue to these things with Alvah.  But, BUT (big BUT here) it is NEARLY flavorless.  The flavor is VERY, VERY mild and barely there, so that made me optimistic that I could eventually get Alvah to drink it in his Coke (only thing he'll drink to those out there wondering).  Next:  The amount of powder in the packets is VERY small, so I doubt you'd be able to split this among multiple glasses of your child's favorite beverage, but if you were patient enough, I'm sure you could figure it out.  I had to keep messing with the dilution of the vitamin powder so that my VERY sensitive kid would not detect the flavor.  We make our own Coke with Coke syrup and making sparkling water in a Soda Stream, so I add the vitamin powder to the bottom of the Soda Stream bottle, mix it with a little warm water and shake it up really good, fill it the rest of the way with cold water, carbonate the water and finish making the Coke.  If you are mixing this with a sparkling beverage without making your own, BE CAREFUL as it will fizz up and explode on you (ask me how I know) so be careful to mix it with a little bit of soda/sparkly stuff and then mix that in with your full glass.  I take the bottle of diluted "vitamin Coke" (as well call it) and just give it to him as he needs a drink until the Coke is gone, wash out the bottle and go about our day.  

Another thing to note, if your kid is really observant with visuals and drinks out of a regular cup (Alvah drinks from a straw cup, so not an issue for us), the vitamin powder does NOT completely incorporate into liquid, so you end up with little white floaties of vitamin floating in the liquid.  Not a ton, but enough to be noticed, so keep that in mind if your child is sensitive to those types of things.

Now, if your kid does condiments on their food, or does yogurt or other soft, yet flavorful things?  This powder would definitely mix in well and would be a breeze to get into a kid, I think.

We do the unflavored vitamin powder every other day, or the vitamins start to get to Alvah's stomach, but otherwise, it's become a part of our every day lives since I discovered it a while ago.

I've also had to add the iron powder they make into our routine as well.  We found out that Alvah is low on iron when he went he got his blood drawn last month.  I was going to add the iron to my subscription (pretty penny) to try out as iron supplements are awful to try and get into anyone, but was lucky in that my pediatrician had a ton of free samples of the products and gave me a bunch of the Ela Ola unflavored vitamin C with Iron to try.  

Right, like ALL iron supplements, this stuff is NOT unflavored.  Now, you can tell they tried hard to make it so and the iron flavor is mild.  But, it is there.  You can taste the iron in the powder and in liquid.  I was going to try and split the powder to make the taste even milder, but it is a TEENY amount of powder (really TEENY!), so there is no splitting the dose in half to dilute it out to help (I tried).   It is, however, way milder of an iron supplement than I've ever been able to find, and if your kiddo was less sensitive in the "detecting any flavor" department, you'd probably have way better luck than me.  It is worth it to get the iron in him with such a mild flavored powder, though, so I've been making it work.  I mix up the iron in the bottle of Coke like the unflavored multivitamin, but I will actually put like 1/2 of the amount of Coke in his cup that contains iron and dilute the iron even further with another bottle of regular strength Coke.  Otherwise he'll find ways not to drink it.  This way, however, does work, so I'm going with it.

In closing, I'd say that these vitamin powders have their drawbacks (mainly cost, honestly), but I would have KILLED to have something like these available to me when Alvah was younger.  I ended up making up yellow dock root tincture when he was young and slipping teeny tiny amounts into his soda to get his iron up slowly but surely when he was small.  This is much easier.   I am honestly thrilled that something like this is available and would definitely recommend if your kid is on an extremely limited diet (like mine).   So, if you are struggling to get nutrients into your kid, I definitely suggest you check them out.

Here's a link to their site so you can check them out on your own...

Ella Ola

And now I'm off to get the son some lunch.  Hope someone finds this helpful out there.

Enjoy!

What's For Dinner: This Week's Menu (and a life update)

 

Man, this last month has been a ride.  Some good, some not great by any stretch.  

We started Alvah on a new medication as he was up to scary levels of Risperidone (for those not in the know, Risperidone is actually an anti-psychotic drug) and we just did not want to continue down that road.  So, we started him on a drug that would rewire his system to process dopamine differently (which he has genetic mutations that make him blow through dopamine way quicker than a normal human being should.

We've had him go nearly three days with no sleep and being ramped up to 11 the entire time (that was scary).  We ended up putting him back on a micro-dose of Clonodine at night as it seemed to be needed to stop the not sleeping thing.  I had a week where he was actually sleeping well, which gave me hope, but now he's back to his usual crappy sleep schedule he's held his entire life.  We are going to try some nutritional supplements to see if we can get his system to just calm down and sleep at night because not only does it wonders for his ability to cope with life, it does wonders for me being able to do thing like think and function like a normal human being.  We've had his violent behaviors go down in intensity and frequency, but now he'll go off all of a sudden with no apparent trigger that you can find, which is hard to say the least.  The medication takes a month to regulate in a normal human body, and Alvah's body always processes things weird, so yeah...we're getting there slowly but surely.  I'm exhausted, stressed out, but hopeful that this medication is actually helping him, not just slapping a band-aid on a major problem (like we put him on the Clonodine because he was eating dangerous things and we put him on the Risperidone because he was doing a lot of damage to himself).  We've gotten him down from 16 mg of Risperidone per day to 2 to 4 mg, so I am really glad about that anyway as Risperidone has some really nasty side effects (like diabetes if you are on large doses long term).

So, yeah, reason I've been MIA is we've been dealing with a lot.  Hopefully things calm down soon here.

When it comes to the menu plan, I actually sat down and created a list of like 40 meals, some favorites, some new ones I want to try, etc. and decided to just do a month long meal plan (I'll share one week at a time on the blog, though).  I'm hoping it might make my grocery shopping more stream lined and keep my grocery budget lower (I DOUBT it, but I can hope anyway).

Armina took off to her grandmother's for the week to avoid Alvah with how unpredictable he's been lately, so it is just my husband and I for dinner this week.  We're going to end up eating more fresh vegetation then we normally would just because we don't have the daughter in the equation (which we did when we got groceries...it was a rough weekend), but I think we can do it before it goes bad on us.

So, let's get to this week's menu.

Menu for the Week 7/20/26 - 7/26/26

Monday:  BLT's, watermelon and chips (I have a box of the shelf stable bacon to use up as it just hit its use by date :).

Tuesday:  Ham and Spinach quiche (using up some of the fresh spinach I bought), canned peaches.

Wednesday:  Oven fried chicken, coleslaw, mashed potatoes with gravy.

Thursday:  Poached Salmon with hollandaise, asparagus (going to use up the asparagus that got frozen during our fridge adventures...I hope it doesn't come out too gross), rice pilaf and salad.

Friday:  Chicken Schnitzel, mashed potatoes, salad, mixed berry galette for dessert (I'm going to turn some of my canned mixed berries into a pie filling...hopefully it turns out good).

Saturday:  Burgers (home made bread) and fries

Sunday:  One Skillet Creamy Peach Chicken with orzo pasta (I'm going to cook it in what I have left of my Thanksgiving turkey stock) and salad.

And there you go folks.  Our menu plan for this week.  Hopefully I can stick to it well.  Anything good going on at your house for dinner?

What's For Dinner: This Week's Menu

This week is rough so far.  We started Alvah on a new OCD med to help with his more challenging behaviors and he was NOT doing well.  We stuck with the new med because by everything I've read it should work well and is well tolerated by pretty much everyone, so I was thinking there HAD to be something else going on.  Turns out, after some experimentation and a pow wow with his doctor on Monday that I was right.  It wasn't the new med that was the problem.  It was the Clonodine.  A med he's been on for years and was his "safe" med out of the two he had to take regularly.  The behaviors and obviously feeling not good on the med REALLY got spot lighted with the new med on board as it started to slow his brain down a bit and now I feel bad because I think I've been giving Alvah a med that was making him kind of miserable and potentially worse for a long time now.  I know in the past Clonodine worked for him to help with his PICA and calm him down, so I'm not really sure when it started to effect him like it is now, but things I was thinking was due to the Risperidone or puberty behaviors was probably due to the Clonodine, at least the last few years.  So, this week we started the slow process of weaning him off the Clonodine so his system doesn't go into a bad state.  After a few REALLY rough days, today he's doing a bit better.  We have about two weeks of weaning to get him down off the med, so hopefully he continues to improve in the coming days.

I'm exhausted.  I went about four days straight with maybe a few hours of sporadic sleep under my belt. My poor husband is in the same boat.   We turned a corner last night and Alvah was able to relax enough to actually sleep for more than 1/2 an hour.  Last night was the most sleep I've gotten in a while, but it was still only about 3 1/2 hours worth, so yeah...dinners need to be simple this week.  My back is not in a great state from not being able to really lie down for any good length of time for the last few weeks, too, so I need something that can be made without me spending a good amount of time on my feet.

Armina is on vacation from work this week, so is spending the week with her grandma having a good time relaxing, so I'm cooking for two instead of three.

Just as a side note:  Never did get to make the Mediterranean chicken from last week, but I actually stumbled on a recipe I wanted to make more, so it all worked out anyway :).

So, yeah, let's get to the menu for the week.

Menu for Week 7/1 to 7/8

Wednesday:  Mediterranean chicken legs, orzo pasta (maybe rice cooked in chicken broth if I don’t want to make pasta), green beans. 

With the chicken, I'm just using her base marinade for the chicken legs and made it up yesterday, but I added a bunch of cilantro because it HAD to be used up from the fridge and I figured it would go with the ingredients.  It totally did and the initial marinade was delicious, so I'm hoping the chicken will be awesome.

Thursday:  poached salmon with hollandaise, rice pilaf, tropical fruit

I'm just going to poach the salmon in a bit of chicken broth and some wine and then serve a ready to make hollandaise on top.  I think it will be tasty.   I was inspired by Max Miller and his video on John Adams and the Fourth of July, but I'm just going with premade hollandaise sauce to make my life easier.

Friday:  Quiche (such a simple recipe.  Every time I make it, it comes out better than the last).

Saturday:  burgers & fries

Sunday:  beef teriyaki (from freezer), rice, sautéed cabbage.

Monday:  Grilled pork chops, baked potatoes, corn

Tuesday:  Pizza or left overs night

And there you go, folks.  Our menu for this week.  You having anything yummy planned this week? 

Thrifty Thursday: Yard Sale Finds

For something new this week, instead of reporting on things I found at the used stores, I got some yard sale finds to report.

First up is actually something we really needed and ran into really quickly compared to when we needed it.  My husband's desk chair broke really bad and he was sitting on basically a stool to work.  We managed to find the above desk chair for 10.00, which definitely beat the 100.00 a new desk chair would have cost us.  So far it is working just fine and giving my husband the back support he needs while working.

Next up is a repeat from last post, which is an 8 1/2 inch cast iron skillet that my husband found at a yard sale for 5.00.  My husband removed the rust that was on it and it now sports a few new coats of cure on it to hopefully get it on its way to being a good skillet for many years to come.

Last up is something that I've been needing to replace.  I have a rectangular wire mesh strainer I got with a cutting board from Costco many, many years ago and it is just getting too old, bent up and worn out that it needs to be slowly retired.  On top of that, Alvah is going through about 1 lb of pasta a day of late, so I need all the strainers I can get.  I found the above wire mesh strainer for 1.00 at a yard sale.  Definitely worth the 1.00.  It is really well built and I've been using it regularly ever since.  I use my Tupperware strainers a lot, but they are a bit awkward to fit in the dishwasher.  This thing fits in like a bowl, which makes it really nice to get in with a load of dishes.

And there you go folks.  Some of the things we've been finding at yard sales this summer.  The last like three years we haven't found much of anything, so it is a nice change of pace to find things we could use or need this summer.

Hope your bargain hunting is going well.

Enjoy!

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

I don't know who might need this today, but please enjoy a picture of a sunning cat.

When it comes to money saving things we’ve done around here this week, pretty much everything done was on my husband’s end.  But, I’ll add a few things for myself to make me feel better.

1.  The Equinox, after sitting for so long, had some hiccups that needed to be fixed.  The mornings here are still cold and the heater was just blowing cold air even though the car had enough coolant.  He was just about ready to replace the thermostat when the guy at the auto parts store backed up his idea to try and flush the heater core first to get rid of clogs and bubbles to see if that was the problem.  My husband flushed the heater core over the weekend and the heater is now working like it should.  Not buying a thermostat definitely saved us money.

2.  The car was also stuttering on and off when driving.  Both he and I figured it was some water in the fuel tank, potentially, from condensation as it sat.  Ran some HEET through the fuel tank and it seems to have cleared up, so at least we were on the right track there.

3.  The old fridge we moved back into the kitchen has had a few problems (because, of course).  First the evaporator fan died and killed the fridge’s ability to move air, so it got hot.  Cue my mother-in-law, once again coming to the rescue with coolers and ice until my husband could come home early and we could go and track down the part we needed (thanks again, Stacey!).   We replaced the fan, which fixed the air movement issues, and then it started being way too cold and freezing food (it is sitting at 24 degrees right now without me opening the door to keep it warmer).  It seems to be that same flap that probably froze shut when the fridge died over a year ago is now sticking open and leaving an open highway to the freezer.  We ordered a replacement part and it should be in today.  I feel really blessed every day the Lord fixed me up with a man who knows how to fix things.  Especially at times like these.

As an aside, just a quick thank you to those who have ordered through my Amazon link.  The associate fees help, especially at times like these, to buy repair parts or other things we need.  Thank you again.  I appreciate it.

4.    My life has been revolving around working on getting Alvah straightened out.  We started him on an OCD med that will work fine with his other two medications and helps with reducing violent behaviors by doing things with dopamine production in the body.  For the first time in years I am optimistic about this.  So far he’s tolerated taking the med great (it is a VERY bitter pill) and while the medication is a slow build type we are noticing a difference in his behaviors on it and when he's really bad, that medicine will calm him down pretty darned fast (like this morning when he was really bad and unstable...it has been a rough few days with him).  If we can get him stable it would be such a tremendous weight off both my husband’s and my shoulders.

5.  We got Alvah’s lab results back and the take aways were that he’s low on iron (not scary low, thank goodness) and he’s REALLY low on Vitamin D (he’s at 7 when the minimum they like to see is 50…not good).  Since he won’t take pills or chew gummies getting vitamins in him is a challenge.  I found a flavorless liquid drop on Amazon that gives you 6000 units of Vitamin D in each drop, so have been putting that in his drink.  Our pediatrician also gave us some “flavorless” iron powder to try (it isn’t flavorless, but the flavor is VERY slight, like almost not there).  Alvah, of course can taste it and is not a fan, but I’m going to work at it until I can get it down him.  It is such a small amount of powder that I know I can do it.

6.   I made dentist appointments for my daughter and I on the same day within an hour of each other.  By accident.  Which is an accidental frugal win since this will save me a trip.  I’ll take happy accidents to save money at this point.

7.  We got some freebies via coupons of late.  The latest one was some free enchiladas.  Never had this brand before.  Hopefully they are good.

8.  I looked up a few tutorials on YouTube to figure out how to do a few things and they really helped to clarify things when we needed it.

9.  My husband was able to pull up repair manuals online to figure out how to troubleshoot our fridge.

10.  I turned a few bananas that were nearly gone into banana bread.

11.  I made meals at home and was able to make bread, which was a blessing.  It has been rough the last bit with how Alvah was to get anything accomplished.

12.  My husband found an 8 1/2 inch cast iron skillet, a pretty hefty one, at a yard sale.  It was rusty but he bought it anyway, figuring we could clean it up and recure it (I've done it before with my cast iron griddle I got for free once...it is not my favorite job, but doable).  He took a grinder to it to get the pitted parts out and got rid of the rust.  I have then put it through the curing process twice now to make sure it has a good cure on it before we use it.  Please excuse the ragamuffin curing job on the pan.  I always try so hard to make the oil as thin as possible when curing a pan and I ALWAYS seem to put it on too thick and it leaves drip type patterns.  Bright side it does feel right and not super sticky, so at least I didn't make it super thick by accident.

13.  My husband took the vacuum apart and cleaned it (boy did it need it).  

14.  I looked up a tutorial on how to oil my sewing machine and got that bit of maintenance done (my manual is around here somewhere but I misplaced it…looking up on YouTube was easier).

15.  I used up canned goods that were getting close to the use by date to just keep food rotating correctly through the pantry.

16.  When the fridge started freezing things, I made sure to use up fresh produce as quickly as possible so we could get them used before they froze.  For the most part it worked.  We lost the head of cabbage I bought as it froze and thawed and was too gross to use, but was able to save some salad and a cantaloupe I got and I just threw some fresh asparagus I had bought for Father's Day straight into the freezer when it froze so it wouldn't get super soggy when thawed.  

17.  I scoped out a project to tackle while my daughter is on vacation from work for a few weeks coming up since we won't have to worry about driving her to work and things.  I am hoping to clean and organize my bedroom closet as you can barely move through it (I'll try to remember to take a before picture, but please don't judge me too harshly...we have no linen closets to really speak of in this house and with Alvah we go through a TON of bedding, so I quickly run out of places to stack blankets and comforters.

I know Frugal Friday is early this week, but I figured it was best.  It's been a rough week with the kid, and while I'm hopeful it will get better, I know too well that you can't depend on hope.

Enjoy!

What's For Dinner: This Week's Menu

When it comes to dinner this week, I'm only going to go through the menu till Wednesday and then redo the menu later in the week, mainly because I have fresh produce we just got with our grocery pick up this time and I want to make sure I use it up as it needs to be used up and then re-evaluate how things are surviving later in the week.

I do need to use my poor sourdough starter for something this week to revive it after it's crazy existence this week, but I'm not sure what I want to make yet, so we might have a random bread item with dinner this week at some point.

Some verdicts on things I tried the last bit.  The slow cooker gumbo was good.  I did add a bit of gumbo file to it, because I had it, but otherwise made it as written and it turned out well.  I let everyone add their own degrees of heat with the cajun seasoning at the table (daughter doesn't like spicy), and it worked out well doing that.

I was actually able to stick with the menu plan last week, more's the miracle with how crazy things got.  So, hopefully this week will work out well, too.

So, let's get to the menu for the next few days!

Menu till Thursday 6/18/26

Sunday:  BBQ ribs, mashed potatoes (freezer), coleslaw (leftovers) cheese biscuits (freezer).

Monday: Mediterranean Chicken (I'm just going to make the chicken and forgo the sheet pan elements),  mashed potatoes (leftover mashed potatoes) with gravy and green beans.

Tuesday:  Baked fish (salmon or halibut...will take vote among family), rice and salad

Wednesday:  pork chops, applesauce, rolls

 And there you go folks.  Our menu for the next bit.  

Enjoy!

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

It has been one heck of a week.  We started out on Sunday.  Since February the lower compartment of the fridge had not acted right.  In February (one month after the one year warranty ran out) it suddenly went too warm and I lost some food.  We thought the coils had froze due to me inadvertently blocking a vent, so my husband defrosted the coils and it seemed to fix it, but we turned it down to the “freezer” setting to keep it at 34 to 38 degrees.  

I am blessed that I really did not trust the fridge compartment after that so tried to keep the items to a minimum in it because Sunday rolled around and I opened the fridge to check it (did that every day after February) to find the fridge at 20 degrees and everything frozen solid.

So I spent the day, when I really wanted to rest and try to get over this cold, processing frozen potatoes and onions.  I turned the onions into frozen diced onions for the freezer.  Got the russets peeled and cut up (sorry knives) while frozen and managed to turn them into mashed potatoes for the freezer.  

The Yukon gold potatoes I diced up, threw them on some baking sheets, coated them in oil and seasoning salt and baked them till crispy to turn into diced hash brown potatoes.  I had some mixed mini potatoes I had bought to make roasted potatoes in the oven.  

Instead I threw some in with the pork roast I had put aside for dinner in the crock pot and the rest I put in with the russet potatoes to boil until tender.  I removed them before mashing the potatoes and put them aside to cool and freeze in big chunks.  These I’m going to try hitting with some oil and putting in the air fryer to crisp up with dinner one night.  Hopefully it works.

Monday rolls around with us thinking we just needed a temp sensor for the bottom compartment of the fridge and we’d hopefully be ok.  Nope.  The fridge went completely belly up and everything just quit.  Thank goodness my mother in law had some spare coolers and bought us some ice to go in them.  Because of her I did not lose all of the food in that fridge.  Luckily the freezer was small in that thing so I was able to get most of everything refrozen before we lost it.

We managed to get the 2400.00 paperweight out onto the deck and we wheeled the old fridge back in to see if my husband could repair it (after I deep cleaned 18 months of gunk out and off of it).  He took off a panel he had researched on the fridge, messed with a flap and put it all back together and it is working fine.  We are keeping an eye on it, though.

Our goal, for now, is to fix the new fridge and sell it for what we can get for it.  I’m kind of done with new fridges at this point.  I cried a lot of tears on Monday with that fridge as 2400.00 is a lot of money to just burn on a lemon like that, especially for us.

The cherry on top of the crap sundae was my husband’s car potentially blew something major, major, on the way home from work on Monday, too and we are trying to figure out if it is worth fixing or not.

It was not a good week.

The frugal stuff I accomplished in a nutshell…

1.  Processed frozen onions and got put back into freezer to stop loss.

2.  Processed 5 lbs russet potatoes into mashed potatoes to avoid loss.

3.  Processed 5 lbs Yukon good potatoes into diced hash browns to avoid loss.

4.  Processed bag of mini potatoes into future roast potatoes and potatoes to cook with a roast to avoid loss.

5.  By checking fridge and freezer was able to keep loss to a minimum.  Total things lost was some salad dressing, my bag of chard that was left from last year’s garden (that was depressing to lose) and some frozen bananas that had defrosted and slimed all over the freezer shelf.  Could have been much worse.

6.  Was able to fix and utilize old fridge without having to throw more money away trying another alternative.

7.  Was able to save the rest of the food by transferring it to another freezer or to some coolers with ice (thanks again, Stacey!).

8.  Husband went online with Whirlpool and at least got some repair manuals for the new fridge out of them.

9.  Am using up perishable food from the fridge that died as quickly as possible because I know what happened will definitely shorten its lifespan.

10. Renewed daughter’s library books over the phone to save us a trip to town in the middle of everything.

11.  A friend of ours had given us a countertop ice maker he didn't need anymore.  My husband insisted on keeping it, even though I didn't see the point at the time to keep it, and it floated around our den for a few years.  When I redid the den, I put it on top of the bar, thinking we might use it downstairs someday if we ever got to a point where we could entertain people again around here.  Well, it sure came in handy when the fridge died as it makes ice a LOT faster than an ice cube tray and when you have an autistic kid that will only drink his preferred beverage with ice...it means a lot to have that handy.  

Glad my husband made me not get rid of it or store it in our storage shed, as trying to find it would have been a nightmare.

12.  Since my husband got his car, the old Equinox has been sitting in our backyard for years.  I refused to let my husband sell it, which now he sees the logic in it now that his car is having major problems.  My daughter and I both loved that car, it was 100% paid for, and I wanted to keep it as it was still a darned good car and could be a good car for our daughter someday (my husband's new car got WAYYYYYY better fuel mileage than the Equinox, which was the entire reason we purchased it).  My husband got a new battery for it this week and fired her up and she's running just fine.  Desperately needs an oil change and a massive detail cleaning on the inside from sitting, but overall...running great.  Glad to see her back in action again, honestly.

And there you go folks.  Our week in a nutshell.   Onto other things.

Enjoy.