rAinEd ouT!

I know some of you may be awaiting my campout update......

The car was packed and we were ready to head out. I was planning on picking up Jenny and Taylor and fropping Maryn off( Doug was watching her until Greg got home) about 4pm. At 4:05 I get everyone in the car, I ran back inside to grab a roll of TP just incase there wasn't any at the campout, and jumped back in the car. I turned the key over and it was de ja vu all over again. My immediate thought was what the #&$*? I was just told about twenty four hours ago my car and battery were fine and now it will not start. I am swearing at theis point. I again get the self charger off the shelf in the garage(the one I just left plugged in several hour to charge) and hooked it up only to see that even though it said it had a full battery before I put it back in the box, it was dead again! I I ran in and called Jenny to see if she or Doug could come jump the car off. I muscled the van out of the garage(my girls were quite impressed that I was so strong) just as Jenny pulled up.

We decided to take her van to the campout and Doug would drive the car back to Honda to get them to check it again. We unloaded my car, and reloaded Jenny's, moved carseats around, I called Greg(he said the same thing I said, what the @#$*?), I called my dad to see if he could tell by the noise if it was the battery or alternator, we negoitated our plan, tried the car a few more times during all of this, and it finally started on its on after recharging itself. We drove to Honda with Doug so they could see me the same girl, with all the kids back again witht he same problem. They tested it again and their little machine said it was fine. EXCUSE ME it isn't fine! They took it over to let someone else look at it an they said they would have to keep it over night. Okay this is great. We are trying to make it to our campout, if they keep my car that leaves six people to squeeze into Greg's hunk-a-junk Saturn. That is not at all safe. Greg talked tot the guy on the phone in route and told him we needed a loaner car if they had to keep mine. Well, in the five minutes Greg was on the phone with the guy the battery ran dead again. YES, we are not making this up. The guy said he would take it around and have a new battery in it in fifteen minutes.

We left Greg Doug, the three boys, and Maryn standing in the Honda parking lot and we were off on our camping adventure. By this time, rush hour is difinitely at it's peak. We needed to stop and get soemthing to eat and wanted something fairly quick so we would not be setting up our tent in the dark. We agreed on Subway, but it was anything but quick. We satisfied our tummies and were back on the road only to soon see raindrops hitting the windshield. If any of you have ever been camping in the rain you know it is no fun. It one thing to be camping and then it start raining in the middle of the night and be stuck but it is another thing to be driving there knowing when you get there with everything dry soon it will be all wet. Neither Jeny nor I knew anyone's cell phone that we thought would be there so we called the few numbers we knew of people at home and finally located some cell numbers. We got in touch with a lady from our ward that was there. When she heard my voice she shouts "DON'T COME" it's pouring down, my girls won't let me leave, we are setting our tent up in the rain, we're miserable.
Remember, I hav ebeen promising Mackenzi for at least four years we were going to this mother/daughter campout before we leave San Antonio. I knew when I turned to say we werenot going the tears were going to start flowing. It broke my heart! I almost cried myself. We told them we would try and go again soon, to which they said it will never happen. We tried to console them and think of something that would make them smile and forget about camping. There wasn't a movie to take them to, you can't get a bowling lane after 6:00, all of the nail places to get a pedicure would be closed before we could get back to one....What to do?

We decided to have a campout in our living room. We stopped and got them a pink craft, we came home put our camp stuff away, put on our pink jammies, painted our toenails pink, and ate cookies(Greg had them made when we got home). It wasn't the campout that they were so excited for but they had fun and I had fun knowing I didn't have to clean up wet, muddy stuff.