The Last Hurrah

We've had an incredibly busy summer.  We kicked it off with a move across the country.  We traveled the globe to Ireland.  We flew to Florida while Quinn went to the opposite end of the East Coast.  We traveled to NJ three times.  Wow, I'm exhausted just typing that.  We weren't done though.  We had long planned a trip to visit Judith and the kids for Labor Day weekend, and nothing was going to stop us from doing that - not even a hurricane :)  It would have been nice to see Tom too, but since he is on deployment that wasn't possible.  He calls quite frequently though and James was able to chat with him for quite a while on Saturday morning.

We headed down there on Thursday directly after the kids' open house at school.  We took Callie with us to avoid boarding costs.  We were a bit worried about how she and Max would get along but it worked out great.  They were very friendly with each other and caused no issues whatsoever.  We arrived there a little after 10 PM, it's about a 6 hour drive and we didn't hit much traffic.  Needless to say, the kids were super excited to see each other and we let them run around for a couple of hours before trying to force them to go to sleep.

We visited the beach on both Friday and Saturday.  Friday we took all the kids so Judith had some time to work or relax.  The beach was pretty torn up from Irene.  The shelf of sand that's usually right when you wade in was gone, and you'd walk a few feet and be up to your chest in water.  The waves were also very rough, not rolling in but crashing.  The shells were incredible too, most likely because the storm stirred up things that are usually at the bottom of the ocean.  We must have taken 25 shells back Friday but more like 100 on Saturday!

Other than that, it was a pretty calm visit.  The kids played and played and no one wanted to leave.  Cassidy and Keely love to play dress up and do the girly stuff and Quinn and Aedan played Wii and trains and boy stuff.  Aedan's broken elbow made for some tough moments when he couldn't do the other things the kids were doing (i.e. swimming in the ocean or pool in their backyard or jumping on the tramp) but I know he was happy to see his cousins and enjoyed his time with Uncle James.

Much to everyone's dismay, we decided to leave on Sunday afternoon in lieu of driving back on the holiday.  We figured we would miss some traffic and have Monday to recoup before the big first day of school.  Boy, that couldn't have been a better decision because of what happened on our drive home.  We were doing great, making great time and didn't stop until we came close to Richmond.  As I pulled off the highway, I hear the car make a strange noise and immediately know something is wrong.  We pull off the exit ramp and decide to try and get to McDonald's so we can eat dinner while trying to figure out what is wrong.  The car is leaking some mystery substance at the McD's but we think it's just water, and so we try to forge ahead after dinner.  We get about a mile up I-95 and all hell breaks loose.  The battery light comes on, then another light is flashing and beeping.  The car sounds horrible and we can't imagine what could be wrong.  We seriously thought the car was toast and I'm imagining the worst at this point.  Thank goodness James is driving...he loses power steering and has to manually navigate us off I-95 and onto a side highway and we pull into a closed car dealership.  When we stop, the engine begins overheating and smoke is coming out of the hood.  Meanwhile, I am on the phone with AAA telling them we need immediate assistance and a tow.  The kids are scared, I am shaking and we know the situation is serious. Our top priority is getting home that night, because we know that auto shops are not going to be open on Labor Day.  Also, car rental companies are not open on Sunday nights...but we are lucky, we are near a major airport and that is the only place we could likely rent a car.  I call a cab to take us to the airport, and our tow truck driver takes us and all our stuff to a location right near I-95 so that our cab driver will be able to find us easily.  Remember that us means 4 people, a dog, two hermit crabs (yes, Keely got one in NC) and our luggage.  Crazy!  The tow truck driver was fabulous though, he was there in about 10 minutes and had us dropped off for the cab in about 1/2 hour.  The cab found us and we were at the airport in about 20 minutes.  I had called Hertz and rented a car while we were waiting for the cab.  We did a one day rental, with return to Washington National Airport because we knew we had a car to use at home.  We get in the car and back on the road at about 10 PM.  We were home about 11:30 with no more issues.  So all in all, we made the trip in less than 8 hours even with all the drama of losing our car.  And another thing I am thankful for is smart phones - I seriously don't know how I would have done any of this coordination without that technology!

We found out on Tuesday morning that the issue was the water pump.  It failed and caused a belt to slip off, thus losing the fan for the engine, the battery wasn't charging (causing the battery light to go on) and the power steering to go off (I think that was the other light).  The car was fixed that day, but because it's about 1.5 hours from our house we are going to pick it up tonight.

I'm glad it was not major damage, but all in all the whole night is going to cost us about $1,000.  I guess that's better than a totaled car, or engine trouble, or more transmission trouble - but we were so lucky in so many respects, and so fortunate to be able to make it home that night safely.


Even with all that trouble though, we were happy to visit North Carolina and it was a fantastic end to a very busy summer!