Labor Day Weekend

This past weekend, Andy and I took a much deserved (for Andy's part) vacation up to balmy St. George. Most of my fam was able to meet us down there, too, so we were way excited to see them! Andy had two big tests on Friday, and after those were done, we left straight from his school to begin our drive! For those of you who haven't ridden in our car recently, the air conditioning struggles a bit in this intense Arizona heat. We took turns using a little frozen stick that we had in the car to help keep us cooled down a bit! It was a hot few hours. We got into St. George around 9 on Friday night, and the partying began! We played some games and Guitar Hero, practicing our rock star kicks that would make David Lee Roth blush. I have to say, we were pretty good. On Saturday, we went and played tennis and went swimming because Dane was very excited about "swimming like a fish!" I don't know how fish-like you can be with a life jacket on, but I think he liked it anyway. It was really fun. Andy had a good time throwing Daner around the pool, and Campbell almost fell asleep because she was so relaxed. Sophie had to take Benadryl before the pool, so she had fun for a bit and then had to go and take a nap once it kicked in.

We got back to the house just in time for the BYU game, so the boys watched that (Andy had to get his fix of college football since he had no studying to do and access to cable) while the girls went and did a bit of shopping and picked up a tasty dinner at Brick Oven. So excited that they have one in St. George now. We played some more games, and Sunday we went to church, took naps, and had another round of tennis. Lovely.

We had a great game of Liar's Dice that night, along with a yummy spaghetti dinner. On Monday, we went on a bike ride with our friend from Andy's school, Daren. It was fun to check out some more of the trails that are around St. George, and we were glad to have a local as a tour guide! After that, we cleaned up and packed, and then we went shopping again. Gotta love those outlets! Daren had planned on driving back with us, so we went and picked him up and we were off! But not for long. We got about 10 minutes or so past Hurricane, and all of the sudden we heard this crazy sound coming from the engine. It sounded like something had dropped from the engine and was being dragged on the highway! Not a pleasant feeling. So I pulled over, and we had smoke coming from the engine. Daren is a car guy, luckily, and he knew right away that we had blown our water pump. We had fluid leaking like crazy from the car. My parents hadn't gotten on the road yet, and my dad was nice enough to bail us out and tow us back into St. George.

Andy was a bit nervous being towed, and with good reason, because there are some steep and windy hills that we had to drive back down to get back into the city! We dropped the car off at one of Daren's buddy's shops and dropped Daren off, and went back to the house! We hadn't really anticipated a longer vacation, but I guess we can't complain! We played some Rummykub and Andy got another fix of SportsCenter. Tuesday, we thought the car would be done first thing, but 10:30 rolled around and we hadn't heard anything. We thought this could be bad news, because apparently when the water pump breaks it can spit off parts into other areas of the engine and do some major damage. We hoped we could hang onto the Mazda for a bit longer before buying another car. Daren's friend was a champ and got it all fixed by 3:00. So, on round 2, we made it home! Hooray for functional cars. Seriously, though, we don't think that it could have happened in a better situation. My parents were still around to tow us, Daren is all sorts of hooked up in St. George and got us a killer deal on the repairs, and we didn't have to pay to stay in the middle of nowhere. I don't like to get on soap boxes, but I seriously think that we were being looked after because there were a lot of factors that made that issue almost completely painless for us, when if it had happened differently we wouldn't have a car and we'd be scrambling looking for something. So, all in all, it was a great weekend, and it's good to be reminded that there's someone looking out for us! Thanks, everyone, for an absolutely fantastic weekend!