The trip that almost wasn't

Phew! All I can say is that we made it - finally. We were originally supposed to drive to Detroit (well the Detroit area, that is) yesterday and spend the weekend. Instead, we decided to wait and drive in this morning and make a day trip out of it. I wasn't feeling well yesterday at all and we are far shorter on finances than we thought (due to Ron's having taken several days off a few weeks ago when the girls were all sick), so we had no money for a hotel room either.

I'll write a post later on about what we did end up doing yesterday...

The agenda today originally included stops in Ann Arbor to visit my brother and see his new place there, then heading to Southfield to see my dad in his new aparment, then heading to my mom's to drop the girls off there, and then going to the banquet for my dad.

Yes, I said 'originally'... Things didn't get off to the best start.

First of all, we were running late. I'd wanted to take off by 9:30 am but it was an hour after that when we actually made it out the door. Our first stop was to fill up the gas tank. Which was no big deal except for the horrendous amount of money that it costs nowadays, but that's nothing new. What was new is what happened when Ron tried to start the van back up.

Click. Click. Click. Uh-oh

Yep, our battery was suddenly dead. So we sat at the gas station, 3 little girls strapped in their seats. Ron went in search of someone who could possibly give us a jump. He found a very nice lady who agreed to help. But when Ron hooked up the jumper cables and tried to get things going, two things happened. Or at least one thing didn't happen - the van didn't start. What did happen is that the connection in our van started smoking and when Ron pulled the cable off, it had burned clear through so the clip thingy (that's the real, technical name for it, right? LOL) actually came right off.

Apparently my wonderful hubby had hooked the cables up wrong on our end. Oops.

The second try was much more successful - a different set of cables did their thing and we had a running van again. Thank goodness! It was too late to still make it to my brother's in time though - he had a 1:00 pm appointment, so we just drove straight to my dad's. And here we are - Ron is playing blocks on the floor with Becca and watching football, Abby and Hannah are coloring and playing with a music keyboard of my dad's, and I'm trying to figure out this iMac to be able to write this.

Hopefully there will be no more 'excitement' for the rest of this trip, other than what's already planned.

I can hope, right? :)