You will not believe this... MDW2009-Pt2

After this fun day, getting back to the hotel, going swimming, getting a late dinner and getting to bed too late, I woke up early Sunday morning to start getting ready for church and to start getting our stuff all packed up. This is how I found the kids when I woke up...just loved seeing them sound asleep on the same bed.
We ate a yummy breakfast, got the van loaded up and headed out to worship with a local congregation. We decided to leave after worship and not go to class because we needed to be back by noon for a meeting for our Honduras trip. We ran through Sonic, got slushes and hit the road.


I put a movie on for the kids, then I kicked my feet up on the dash and started reading a magazine. About 25 minutes down the road, I hear Jon say, "You've got to be kidding me. I think the transmission just blew!" We slowed to a crawl, turned on the county road that just happened to be right there, and conveniently rolled into...

this building which is conveniently a...
FUNERAL HOME!!! Can you believe this? Here is the rainbow trail of transmission fluid we leaked as we rolled into a parking spot...
Jon got out and started checking everything out. The transmission dipstick had NO fluid on it. We were in the middle of nowhere. Jon got on the phone to our Roadside Assistance Club. I got the kids out of their seats, figuring that we'd be there a while....
Thankfully it had stopped raining. Pretty sure we weren't gonna make the meeting, the next course of action was to figure out how the kids and I were going to get back home--we couldn't all fit in the wrecker that was coming to get the van! A quick call to some great friends solved that, and in less than 30 minutes Philip was headed our way.

Now...how to pass the time...what is there to do in a closed funeral home's parking lot??? Well...

Jon and I were on the phones for a good bit of time trying to make arrangements. The kids spent most of that time splashing in the puddles and picking clovers...
Then we decided to go for a walk around the building and see what we could discover. We walked out to the long grassy meadow and picked some wild daisies...
Then we played in the tunnel (that I'm guessing is where the hearses park). This tunnel was very echo-ey and fun. Also, there was a good breeze blowing through, making it much cooler than the parking lot.
The kids both loved this creepy sort of owl that was in the tunnel. His head bobbled this way and that...they kept touching him and making his head spin.
Then we found our way around the building and saw a line of worker ants. We were fascinated with watching them march in their line...it really was quite a long line!!

There were also some tree-climbing lessons. Lawson really wants to learn how to climb trees--too bad he never gets to practice in our yard b/c all we have is huge pine trees!!

We also did some puzzles that we had in the van, sang some songs, and worked on our Books of the Bible. Despite the downer that the van was broken, we actually had a lot of fun while we were waiting!

Finally Philip saved the day and rolled into the parking lot. I'm sure making an almost-3-hour round trip was not the way he had planned on spending his Sunday afternoon, but we were surely thankful that he and Shannon made that sacrifice for us!

We loaded up the carseats, and just a few minutes later our flatbed truck rolled in. Within moments, we were loaded up and on our way. We grabbed a bite for the kids, then Jordan took a nap on the way home.

Definitely not how we planned for our Sunday to go either, but I am so thankful that our breakdown was safe and didn't involve an accident! The future of the van is still to be determined. It is currently being looked at in a shop.

Thankfully it was a holiday weekend, so Jon got to be off Monday, which was also our 7th anniversary. I will post about our Monday tomorrow.