Trip to Grandma's Day 1 & 2

For Halloween weekend I decided to take the boys to my mom's house for a little change of scenery and for some hard core trick or treating. This is James' first year of going door to door and my mom's town is so small, that everyone in the county drives in to her neighborhood. It makes trick or treating so much more fun to see everyone participating! We were gone for four days and Anthony stayed home to work and fish :) He said he was going to miss us, but he was also looking forward to spending all of his free time fishing and working on his aquarium. (Although truthfully, that doesn't look that much different from normal everyday life for him...)

My car had been acting strange a week before the trip, so we borrowed Anthony's parents' car while we got it fixed. It was so fun to drive around a different/newer car! James loved it too, he was sad when we had to give it back. It only took a few days for them to fix the long list of things that were wrong with it and it cost us $900 (!) but hopefully that will last us for the next few years. This was our first time doing any kind of repair on it since we bought it 5 years ago, so it was time. I was a little nervous about the 3 hour drive to my mom's house with both boys, but at least I felt secure that the car wouldn't act up (or so I thought, but I will get to that later).

Thursday morning I loaded up the car with all of our stuff and hit the road. Poor Rett is still in a rear-facing car seat so he got sun in his eyes for a lot of the drive and was crying. James was actually really sweet with him. He would try to get him to laugh and then say, "See Retty? It is funny to have sun in your eyes!" We only had to stop once when James had to pee. He drank 3 cups of milk before we even left the house, but flat out refused to use the bathroom before we left. Sure enough, 1 hour in he piped up from the back seat, "Mommy? Does Grandma's house have a potty? Cause I need to go". We were in the middle of nowhere driving through the Ocala National Forest, so I had to just pull over and let him pee in the grass on the side of the road. Oh well. What are you going to do?

Friday morning I went to Zumba with my mom while my brother Daniel watched the boys. Then we came home, changed, and went to lunch with one of my mom's friends. James was pretty antsy during lunch and I could tell he wanted to run around and play, so after lunch we went to the library where I thought he would like this really cool wooden train display they had. He was excited about it at first, but then got really mad that it wasn't a real train you can get in and drive. So we got out of there and went to the park. We played for a long time at the park and he had a great time until he slipped in a puddle and hit his head :( He was so hysterical that it was definitely time to go home. We got into the car and it wouldn't start!!! Can you believe it? I called Daniel to come check it out and thankfully it turned out to be an old lose cable on my brand new battery that needed to be replaced. Jiggling the cable got it to start up again and Daniel volunteered to replace the cable and do some other tuning up to my car.

I was so happy to not have to worry about my car and just let someone else take care of it, so I went inside the house. A little while later, Daniel came inside with this strange look on his face. He said, "Soooo, when your car is running it automatically locks when you close the door?". Yep. He accidentally locked the keys in the car, with the car running. Anthony had the spare key in Edgewater, so we were stuck. First we spent a good 45 minutes trying to nudge the lock with a coat hanger, but it is much harder than it looks in the movies!

Finally we broke down and called AAA and an hour and a half later, the locksmith showed up. At this point my car had been running for about 2 hours! Even the locksmith had a little trouble getting it unlocked.

 After a couple of different tries, he finally got a hold of a window button on the drivers side and lowered the back window. Success!

While we were outside waiting for the locksmith, we also realized that my tires looked low on air. After we got the car turned off, Daniel checked them and they only had half as much air as they were supposed to! We pumped my tires up right away. We also discovered that while we were trying to unlock the door with the coat hanger, we disconnected the lock on the driver's side door so that the key didn't work in the door. Luckily Daniel was able to take off the door panel and reconnect it. It was a rough day for my car!

Even though Friday night was Halloween, it was also the day of the town's high school football game. High school football is such a big deal there that they rescheduled trick or treating for Saturday! Of course, I wanted to check out the football game and see what all the fuss was about. It was really fun, but also really cold. It was in the 40's!

Their mascot is a tiger and James loved watching him dance around and try to get the crowd going. He even got to give him a high five! We also had a good time watching the team come out on the field through a cloud of fog and listening to the fun music that they play for different things (fouls, touchdowns, time outs, etc...). James played on the bleacher steps and ran around by the field most of the time. We made it through the half-time show before we decided it was too late and cold to be out there. After we got home and I got both boys in bed, I stayed up late watching cooking shows on food network with my mom and Daniel. I hardly ever miss cable, but I miss the food network!