Cold November Rain

So, I'm back from Chicago. Cold, cold, dreary, bitter weather out there. The second half of the trip was great. No catastrophes--Nauvoo is not nearly as cold as Chicago. The only downside was everything in Nauvoo closes at 5:00, except the town bar, which closes at 8:00. Oh well, seeing Church History locations was great.

But the first half of the trip--oh my. First, the night before the trip I got a speeding ticket on the way home from the Planning Commission Meeting. Lucky for me, the nice officer cut the ticket down from 25 over (apparently Arrowhead is only 40 mph not 50) to 9 over, which was nice. When I got home, H barfed on me. Yes, my darling 3 year old daughter came down with a 24 hour flu bug the night before we flew out. So the next day she barfed when we were boarding, she barfed at the rental car counter, she barfed at the wedding rehearsal dinner, she barfed at the restaurant after the rehearsal, and she barfed the day of the wedding. Need I mention that she pushed away everything I tried to get her to barf into, so we went through all of our packed clothes in 3 days? Meaning, that just a few short days into the trip we had to do laundry.

So, we load up the mini-van (we had 6 people in our group), and we head to my newly married brother-in-laws house to do laundry. We get rear-ended on the way over by a Ford F250, driven by a young driver who was going too fast on a wet, rainy day. The back window of the minivan shatters. It's a very cold day. And I happened to be taking a swig of Diet Dr. Pepper right when the truck slams into us, so I, and the front of the minivan, get drenched in soda. I end up wearing my BILs Navy sweats the rest of the day, making me look like everyone else in the area. So we blow all of Saturday waiting for a replacement minivan and going to the ER, because everyone is sore and Brent's 90 year old grandmother was one of the people in the van.

And did I mention that the accident happened the day before Brent's birthday? And I forgot about his birthday because I was so sore? What a trip. If I didn't have a speeding ticket to go take care of tomorrow, I'd be super glad to be home.