Monday, February 14, 2011

So Much Fun & The Ride Down

We had a great long weekend. The rental house was HUGE and beautiful! It was on a lake that was frozen over. There were fishing shanties on the lake and ever day snowmobilers would cut through the yard to the lake which made the boys so excited. There were so many rooms and beds with 2 kitchens, 2 laundry rooms and a wonderful view. I caught one sunrise (for just a few minutes) from the loft over the 3 story great room. We found a great oldies radio station that played jammin' music all weekend and my mother cooked like crazy! We did a really cute craft made of paper hearts of all sizes and colors. The treasure hunt was so fun and took them on a trek all over the house. There treasure was full of goodies, mini books, stickers and pencils. The pinata was so fun and luckily broke after every kid got a chance to swing at it. Candy and confetti scattered everywhere.



Now I must tell you about our trip down there.

First, the back story. There is a lady at my church who quite often blesses my family financially. This past Sunday was one such time.

Okay, so on Thursday we packed the car, I went to get gas and got on the highway. As soon at we got on the highway, my battery light came on. Now, my car is 11 years old and has always had a bad sensor that occasionaly causes some of the warning lights on the dashboard to come on in kinda of a weird way. Like, I had a headlight out and the seat belt light flashed until I got the lamp replaced. Things like that, so when the battery light came on and just flashed, I did not give it too much thought. Then it came on and stayed on and I started praying to make it at least to our destination 'cause I did not want to be on the side of the road with 5 kids in freezing weather. I told the kids to pray that "Helen" (Yes, yes... I have named my car) would get us to the rental house. We had to leave an Interstate Highway to get on a Route which was a little 2 lane thing.

As we are driving I am just silently praying as first the clock light goes out, then the digital odometer light went out which made me nervous as now I can't track where I am on my map. We got to the exit and the intersection of the street we were going to be on and I lost all electrical power: the spedometer dropped and the running lights went out. My mom spotted an auto shop, the traffic light turned green and I coasted right up to the garage door. TThe engine was still running. The mechanic came out and I explained what happened. He grabbed a battery tester and when he clamped it on, the battery read completely dead! He looked at me his mouth opened: "How is this engine still running?!" I knew we had prayed it into town.

This shop could not fix it so he charged the battery enough for me make it the next 7 miles to the house. I found another auto shop, called AAA and had it towed to the mechanic. It was my alternator. The amount of the repair; The amount I had in my pocket!

The guy fixed the car in just a couple of hours.

I just had to tell you guys!