Summer Vacation~Friday & Saturday June 27th & 28th

I started out around 8:30 driving the kids to Fort Wayne. Since we had to take two cars and John had a leadership conference until at least noon, I figured we would go and get there early enough to get settled. Well, about 40 miles from St. Louis (about five hours from home and 6 hours from Fort Wayne) we heard a huge crack on the roof of our car and I saw stuff flying off the back (it turned out it was glass from the sunroof). I quickly pulled off a rest area and called John (he had just walked out of his meetings). He told me to keep going unless I think I will hit rain. I had checked the radar before we left and it was about 30% chance of rain so I pulled back onto the highway and about two minutes later we were in the middle of a hard rain. Seriously. It was a quick rain, but hard. I saw drops coming in my lights on my roof and Jack kept telling me they were dripping from his ceiling. Well, I had no where to stop and thankfully it stopped raining. I called a Toyota dealership in St. Louis that told us to stop by (Actually the first one I called told us they were short staffed and I could get an appointment tomorrow). When I pulled up, they told me the glass was "blown out" and thought that maybe there was some sort of defect that caused this. They also told me it was unsafe to drive it. And I should get a rental. Well, I told them I was going to be gone three weeks and I had to get to Indiana tonight because we were flying out tomorrow! They took it over to their body shop and vacuumed out the glass and taped it up really good. We were fixed up and ready to go in about two hours. They were super nice to us (I think they must have seen the look of terror on my face, or they were wanted the crazy loud kids out of the crowded waiting room!) and didn't charge us for fixing the van. I left and got back on the highway and it rained for the first two hours on the road so I am glad I stopped. The taped held up and no more water came into the van. We were so thankful to get to Aunt Sue Sue's after being on the road over 13 hours. Saturday morning, we took the van to Evans Toyota so they could fix the sun roof while we were gone. Our flight took off at 1:30 PM. We flew to Detriot (quick flight--only about 25 minutes). Then we boarded the plane for Amsterdam. We took off at 4 PM and were supposed to land the next morning at 5:55 AM. Europe, here we come!

 Kids ate (free) popsicles at the Toyota dealership. We know they were free because Jack saw the freezer and ran to the front of the store to ask if they were free (as I am trying to tell him they were!)

 

Getting ready to take off in Detroit