driving... and driving.... and oh yeah... driving.

We had a pretty eventful drive to Utah. We got up early and had everyone loaded into the car by 5:30am. We said our prayer for a safe trip, Jeremy put the keys in the ignition and..... nothing. The car wouldn't start. We tried for about 20 minutes. Gave up and brought all of the kids back inside. The plan was to take it to the mechanic at 8am when they opened and get it figured out before we went on our way. Our car is silly and won't start randomly. It usually starts within a few minutes. This happens at least once a month. I felt in my heart that this was one of those times and that it would start if we would just give it some time. While the kids and I were inside nearly in tears because our trip was postponed for the time being, Jeremy was in the car praying. Begging and pleading with Heavenly Father to help us on our way. No sooner than his Amen was said, he turned the key and voila! A miracle. It started. We decided that it was safe to go and were on our way. After three hours we stopped for gas. We filled up, put the key in the ignition and click.... nothing. This time it started within a few minutes and we were off again. We arrived at our first destination, Jeremy's sister's place in Chicago for lunch and decided that we had better take it to her mechanic to get it checked out before leaving again. $350 later and a new ignition switch and we were off again.We decided that we were feeling pretty good, and seeing as we had just spent all of our budgeted hotel money on a new car part... we would try to drive straight through the night to get to Utah mid-morning the next day. We are crazy, we know. It was rough... but we did it. 5 hour energy drinks are awesome. That's all I have to say about that.The ride home was much better. The only downside was when I accidentally locked both sets of the keys in the van after loading everything in the night before we left. Jeremy was able to break into with his mad skills and we saved ourselves from having a pay a locksmith to come and unlock it for us. Our neighbor taught us the ghetto way to break into a car awhile back. I never knew it would come in so handy!

We drove straight through to Chicago... leaving Utah at 5:30am, with the arrival time at 3:30am. We stayed through the morning and had a fun visit with Adam and Becca. They were kind enough to feed us breakfast, lunch and play a fun game with us before we went on our way. We drove the last 6 hours straight through only stopping for gas. All of the kids were champs, although Peter made it clear during that last stretch that he would be okay to never sit in his carseat ever again.