When It Rains, It Pours......

Ok, so imagine this......

We decide to take a nice fun vacation to Phoenix to visit Bill's family since most of them hadn't seen Brinley since she was born. Yes, yes...I know. A trip to Phoenix, in the last part of June, are you CRAZY?! Apparently, yes, we were.

The "plan" was to drive to Vegas and spend the night there, then finish driving the rest of the way the next day. Mainly because we weren't sure how Brinley would do with the long drive. Plus we wanted to take Caden to M&M world. :) Little did we know, that our plans would soon be twarted. Bwahahahahaha! (Evil laugh in the background....)

Well, we get to St George and the car starts making weird noises and acts like it won't move forward. Hmmmmm, sounds kind of fishy. So, we find a parts store in Wendover and the guy takes a look at our transmission fluid as that is what we think is wrong, and he says it is full and fine. So, we take off again. Further down the road, we know that something is really wrong with the car. We couldn't go above 70, which was killing me because it was 5 BIG HUGE miles below the speed limit. LOL!

Luckily, we made it to Vegas with a whole lot of prayers and even more prayers. We stayed in the Excaliber hotel which Caden called his "Castle Hotel, where his queen lived". When we got there, we were totally blessed by them giving us a free room upgrade to a room in the towers with a HUGE jacuzzi tube. Needless to say, we didn't have trouble getting Caden to take a bath, and then another bath, and another, and another....... :) When we had the car looked at the next day at a dealer, they told us that the transmission was shot. And, the best part was that it wouldn't make it to Phoenix, and it would cost $5,000 to fix. HOLY SMOKES! I cried in the hotel room for a minute, then composed myself and took the kids to the shark exhibit to keep Caden occupied while Bill found a transmission place to see if he could get it fixed lower, and also about renting a car so we could finish making it to Phoenix. The transmission place said they could fix it for $2,200 dollars. So we figured we would get it fixed up, and then sell it when we got home and buy the minivan we have been saving up for. We weren't planning on it so soon, but desperate times, call for desperate measures. They said they would be able to have our car fixed by Sunday, so we could pick it up on our way home when we dropped off the rental car. Then we got the phone call a couple hours later. The transmission had corrupted the radiator too. So, we were going to have to replace the radiator too. Tack another $600 on to the bill. However, he assured us that we will be able to get our money out of it by selling the car. So, we felt good about it after some prayers and went ahead with the fix. Whew! One crisis taken care of.

The visit with family was incredible. HOT, but incredible. It was great to see family again and talk to them all. Everyone keeps getting bigger, and the numbers keep increasing. :) One of Cadens favorite moments was playing with his cousin David Lorenzo, and running through the fountain with his cousin Raimi. So much fun!

Then came the drive home. We thought we were doing pretty good when we made it past St George and we were in the home stretch. Ooops, I spoke too soon. Stopping for gas in Cedar City, I looked over and there is a huge green lake forming under our car. All I could do was just laugh. Yes, not just normal laughter. They type that you hear in the building on the hill wtih the men in white coats coming to take me away..... Yep, we check under the hood and the coolant hose has sprung a leak. So, Bill leaves Brinley and I at the gas station to have a break, and runs to an auto parts store that the clerk said was open for 3 more minutes. We were able to get the hose and finish our drive home. Safe at last! It never felt so good to get home and be in my own place and in my own bed, and not have to worry about driving anywhere anytime soon. Oh, wait. We had to drive to Manti on Tuesday the 24th for Becki's wedding. I spoke too soon again. :) LOL It is late and I will have to post pictures of her wedding tomorrow. As you can tell, I am trying to catch up on recent events. It has been crazy. You will see why tomorrow......