Sunny Day

So far our road trip has been very...interesting indeed. It started out with us driving through a gosh awful snowstorm in South Dakota...but SD is great about clearing the roads unlike North Dakota...they usually wait until after the snow is done and that could be days later.

Anyway, we made it through the snowstorm, through driving 20 miles off the hwy for food, then another 20 miles for gas and made it to Offutt around 11:30pm. Our deadline for check in was midnight. So I go get us all checked in and a room key, head out to the car to go to our room (which is on the other side of base - probably a good 5 miles or so away) only to find out that the car has DIED, battery is fine Scott replaced it before we left but other than power coming on the car is not doing nothing. We're stuck. So I go back in and explain the situation to the very nice lady at the check in desk and she makes arrangements for us to have two rooms in the lodging there...which are reserved for single occupants (not families) Get settled in as much as possible and go to sleep.

Next morning (hey it's GOOD FRIDAY) I go out to check on the car, all this time hubs and I are communicating on the cell phone and he is calling people all over base for me and trying to talk to coworkers that know the base...but they of course are out of town for the weekend. So I am pretty much stuck not knowing a single soul in the entire state of Nebraska and needing to get the heck out of dodge and onto the road again to complete the last leg of our journey....Hubs contacts the base service center and they guy is supposed to show up in 5 minutes...30 min later he still hasn't shown up...I call him and he has gone to the wrong lodging...we coordinate and he shows up, looks at the car and says its probably the starter but their towtruck is out of commission and I need to get a tow truck from off base to come get it and take it the two blocks to the service center. So we contact our insurance (USAA is AWESOME!) They in turn contact the tow truck and schedule his arrival at the gate, contact me and let me know they are on the way...thank GOD the gate is only a 5 min walk from the rooms where we are currently staying so I leave Cody in charge of the kiddos and head off to meet the tow truck at the gate. An hour later I have him signed into the gate and at the car (long process - if you think airports are bad..you've obviously never tried to get a tow truck onto an airforce base.)

So we get the car to the service center only to find out that there is only ONE mechanic on duty at this particular facility (the same nice gentleman that came out earlier in the morning to look at it in the parking lot) and he has a line of cars ahead of me a mile long and he gets off at 4pm and the shop is closed on Saturday and Sunday! It's now mid morning and I am getting pretty desperate to find a way off of this base and back onto the road again....the children are getting very restless being cooped up in a room at this point and its getting very cold out so they can't go out to play. So I decide to rent a car to get us out of there...

Numerous calls later I manage to locate a rental car agency that will allow me to drive out of state and pay with a debit card...Enterprise does not. Only problem with this was, the car was across town...so I contact a cab, meet them at the gate, get the car and drive back to base and about the time I am about to go through the gate the service center calls and says that my car is fixed and ready to be picked up!!! No call to tell me that they are even LOOKING at it...so I turn around and proceed to repeat the above steps....cha ching cha ching cha ching...after renting a car to cross town and two cab fares later I manage to go collect the kiddos (Cody is about to go stir crazy by now) and then walk to the service center to collect my car. IT WORKS!!!! PRAISE GOD!!! HALLELUIAH!!! We did a weary jiggety jig all the way to the car and the sweetest sound on earth is the sound of an engine cranking at this point. It is close to 6pm by this point so we call it a day and I gather the kiddos and take them to dinner at SONIC :) we have downsized to one room at this point because I didn't know whether we would be staying or not but since it is so late decide to stay one last night and get a little sleep before heading out again...at this point I am totally exhausted. We had a greats night sleep, the car did just fine the next morning and we headed on our way...as we were crossing the line out of Nebraska we come to a toll booth and had to stop and pay a dollar to cross. I say to the lady "You mean I have to PAY to leave Nebraska....?" She says "Its only a DOLLAR!" Oh lady you don't even know how much I would give at this point to just get back on the highway again...so we paid and left HAPPILY :)

The rest of the road trip went very very smoothly. Cody drove from around Joplin to my mom's and did very good. He is now a driver :) Yay!

We had a very nice Easter but that is another update and I will tell about that later. I gotta go now, I'm on dialup and gotta get this posted I hear Jaiden is awake from her nap...