They All Call Me Mom

got gas?

I seriously spend much of my day as a shuttle service.  Drive kids to school, drive kids home from school, drive kids to sports practices, drive kids home from sports practices;  to the library, to Staples when they need school supplies, to playdates, to friend’s houses, to parties, to homeschool field trips… and all the other appointments in between.  Definitely the “downer” to having so many children, if I could name one thing, is all the driving.  
We have a 15 passenger van.  That van’s gas tank gets filled on average 2 -3 times per week.  Yes, that’s PER WEEK!  Because in addition to all the running around I do mid-week, we have soccer games on the weekends (which require a distance drive because they are club soccer, not our local A.Y.S.O soccer.  Club requires traveling, and we have two kids in club!)  And we have friends and family who live an hour’s drive away, who we visit as well.  Our gas tank gets about 12 miles to the gallon, average.
Where we live, the gas today is $4.23 per gallon, and that’s the “cheap” lowest grade gas.  To fill our van’s gas tank costs a little over $100 with these prices – so that’s $200-$300 per week in gas for our family (and this isn’t including Rich’s truck that he commutes to work in!)

Something has got to change!

If the gas prices aren’t going to go down, then we have to limit our driving.   How in the world am I going to do that?  Not have the kids involved in sports?  Not allow them playdates, field trips? No more going to visit family and friends? That hardly seems fair.
In some states, the gas prices are still in the $3.00 range.  But here?  We will be at $5.00 per gallon in no time.  Darn California prices! 

Sometimes I will get in the van in the morning and I could swear we had a full tank the day before…yet it reads we are down to half a tank.  I wonder  if  times are getting desperate enough that people go around stealing gas from gas tanks in the middle of the night?  Because I could swear that’s what’s happening to my tank.  Should get a lock on my gas tank?  I just might have to.

What is the price of gas in your area?  Is anyone living in a state that has higher gas prices than ours?  If so, what are you doing about it, other than complaining and whining like me? LOL

post signature

Comments

  3. I live in Canada, and right now we’re at $1.24/L, so $4.96 for a gallon. Ugh, so ridiculous! But there’s only 2 kids in our family, so that cuts way down on the driving, and we also have a car with great gas mileage. Not sure if it would be worth it, but maybe you could consider getting a small car for the times when you’re not out with all the kids, but just a few? That would only make sense if you’re often driving with 2 or 3 of them, but if you’ve got all nine with you, then I guess you’re stuck!

    Reply

  7. Hi there!

    If I calculated correctly, then the gas price here in Austria is at about $7,20/gallon (we pay approx. EUR 1,30 per litre) and authorities are about to take the price even higher. It’ll take a while until your gas prices will be that high 😉

    btw: love your family!

    Reply

  11. We have the same van, same issue. Don’t feel too bad about your Cali gas prices, it was $3.99 here or thereabouts for the last week, and spiked to 4.29 over Easter. SUCKS! Literally.

    Reply

  12. Hmm, as far as I can figure out (converting litres to gallons and NZ$ to US$), we are currently paying about $6.65 per gallon here. Of course, that’s meaningless without a comparison of costs of living and wage & tax rates, but yes we think it’s expensive!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *