Road Trip

Caleb was originally supposed to leave for his mission in the middle of January.  I knew we wouldn't be able to drive up that weekend so Tiff and I bought airline tickets for the farewell.  His departure date was moved up to January 1st so we decided to drive up for his farewell.  We were worried about the weather, but the weather reports were looking clear, so we made the trip.

We left at 4:30 AM on Thursday.  The kids were so excited to go, but dreading the long drive.  Hallee kept telling me she wasn't tired and two minutes later I looked back and found her like this.

We were making great time.  We got to La Grande Oregon at noon.  We pulled into the gas station and noticed that there was a lot of steam coming from our engine.  Keith looked under the hood and everything was wet.  He called Alex, a friend who is a mechanic in our ward, and talked to him about it and they were able to figure out that there was a crack in an anti-freeze hose.  We were so blessed that our engine didn't over heat and that we discovered it.  It would have been really bad if we kept going through the blue mountains pass with that leak. The anti-freeze had sprayed out everywhere under the hood.  We found a repair shop down the street from where we were and they were great and worked fast.  The whole thing set us back two hours, which really isn't bad for a car repair.  The kids were good sports about waiting for the car to be fixed.  They had some toys and the owner brought out some cupcakes for the kids.  There was a subway not too far away so Jonah and I walked over and got lunch for everyone.  There was a lot of snow and puddles on the ground and no sidewalks so it was a tricky walk, but we made it.  Jonah was in his shorts and of course he forgot to pack a jacket, stinker!  After they fixed it and the mechanic got back from the test drive I went and loaded the kids back in the car while Keith waited to pay.  The kids and I were all ready to go when the owner hopped in the car and said he wanted to take the van for a test drive and said we could just go with him.  I think the kids were a little nervous and it was a little awkward, but he was a nice guy.  We were grateful that they doubled checked it.  He said he didn't want to send us through the mountain pass without being sure our car would be okay.  We were very blessed, I'm so grateful that the repair went so smoothly and that we didn't get stranded on the side of the road.

We drove the last couple of hours in the dark and the rain, it was a little rough, but all in all the drive was pretty good.  We went straight to our townhouse to make sure there were no problems.  The house was great.  It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big kitchen and living room and a garage, which was great because it rained nonstop the first two days.  After that we went over to Gary and Julie's for dinner.  It was so great to be out of the car!  The kids were thrilled to see their cousins.

On Friday we slept in a little and then got ready and headed over to their house.  Mom and dad came in that morning.  We hung around the house all morning while we were deciding what to do.

The girls decided that we wanted to go to the mall.  They had fun looking in stores for a little while and then we got ice cream.

We went to Sub Zero.  It was pretty cool to see them put the nitrogen into the cream to make it into ice cream.

Keith took the boys to a trampoline park.  They had a great time.  After that we went to an indoor sky diving place.  I will post about that next.  Everyone who did it loved it!

After sky diving we went to Sweet Tomato.  I don't know if I have ever been so hungry for dinner, it was really late when we finally ate. .  I had a migraine and I was starving.  After dinner we stopped for some migraine medicine on the way home and then I took a shower and went to bed so I could sleep off my headache.  Luckily, I woke up feeling much better!