Date night

Clearly, this did not go as we had planned.

We had this great idea that we'd take the kids over to Jeremy's parents house on Saturday afternoon, spend the afternoon cleaning and packing, then go out to a nice dinner just the two of us and have our very first ever night without the kids. Then we'd pick them up first thing Sunday morning and hit the road to Bakersfield. Sounds great, right?

Well, no sooner had we dropped of the kids but the engine on our truck started to overheat. We'd only driven 3 miles on flat ground at city speeds, so this was obviously worrisome when we considered towing the 16,000lb trailer behind. We had the truck towed to a mechanic and found out just how lucky we were. The engine was overheating because it only had 1/3 the oil it should have, which then built up enough pressure to pop off the coolant hose and spew coolant everywhere. There are a myriad of other things that could have happened, some resulting in our engine needing to be replaced, so we are quite thankful and pleased with this outcome. Honestly, if we were going to have a breakdown, this was pretty much ideal circumstances. No kids in the car, no big rush to go anywhere, an option for a backup vehicle (Jeremy's parents graciously loaned us a car), no trailer with us, and we were paid up at the RV park until next Friday so we didn't even have to leave. The mechanic was great and we'll pay less than we were expecting. The only bad thing is that he also found a very frayed belt which probably would have busted on the drive to Bakersfield. Good that he found it, but bad that we can't get a new one until tomorrow (Monday). So we're hanging out in Sunnyvale a few extra days. Our latest plan is to leave on Tuesday afternoon, but we'll see.

As for our date night, steak turned into In & Out burger, and we spent most of the time apart (Jeremy at the mechanic & me cleaning). We were thankful that the kids were being taken care of, but for different reasons than we originally planned. It's okay though-I'm so glad we're getting the truck in good shape before we hit the road. It's a long way to Bakersfield.