End of Semester/Trip to MO/AnniversaryETC

So, vacation time has finally come for us. I finished my last final on Thursday, and Kizzie finally finished her big Christmas enrichment activity, which meant that we were free to leave! Yippy.

We left Friday morning at about 3:00 AM and drove straight through to Missouri. With stops (those dang kids always want clean diapers, food, and the like... time wasters!) we coasted in to Hamilton, MO in about 17 hours. It was a long day, but went really well. We beat much of this bad weather (trust, me, I didn't leave at 3:00 AM for fun or because I have otherwise been oversleeping over the course of the semester), and the boys we pretty pleasant until just before we arrived (thanks to Jon's car dvd player we borrowed, and my IPOD). That helped time go pretty well. The car survived well, except for the fact that the thing that shoots the wiper fluid seems to be either frozen or broken.

Since we've been here in MO, our luck hasn't been quite so good. On Saturday, as Kizzie was driving to her parents' house, the van was overheating. When we arrived we found that it was pretty much bone dry of antifreeze, so we gave it a drink. On Sunday, on the way to church, we heard a loud pop followed by smoke gushing from under the hood. Luckily we had some blankets in our van (because it was something like 2 degrees with -10 wind chill - in other words, it was cold!), and were able to snuggle up until my brother Steve came to rescue us. It turns out that a radiator hose pretty well exploded. With the assistance of Kizzie's brother (I must emphasize yet again that I have no practical skills), the hose was replaced, and our lovely van is back in action.

Sunday was our 4th anniversary (congratulations to us), so we left the boys with family and went out to dinner on Monday night. We drove our newly repaired van to Chillicothe to go to Applebees. Unfortunately for us, our heat did not work (did I mention how ridiculously cold it is?) on the 25 minute drive. We got to the restaraunt and ordered our food, including our favorite (the appetizer sampler). We waited and waited... no appetizer sampler. Finally, a waitress came and brought us our main dishes. We reminded her of our appetizer and she said she'd take care of it. We began eating our food to discover that it was luke-warm at best. The Manager came out to bring us our appetizer a little while later and told us that it would be no charge, and asked how the rest of our food was. We told her that it was cold and she said that there would be no charge for the whole meal. Woohoo! With what we would have paid for tip (the waitress did nothing... as evidenced by our lack of appetizer... and water... etc...) and everything, that saved us about $40! That a rare warm spot in a very cold weekend.

Anyway... this is only the beginning. I'm sure there was be more tails of car repair... and coldness in the near future.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Andy