Battteries can fix anything!

We spent this Thanksgiving in Las Vegas with Jarad's parents and his aunt and uncle Rita and Sandy. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, but this post is about our adventure on the way there. This story got kind of long, so if you just want to read the fun part of the story, go straight to the the paragraph highlighted in bold.

We left Santa Barbara at 2:30pm on Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Archer fell asleep right away. We let Avalon watch one TV show and then said it was time for a nap. Avie didn't want to nap, so after 30 minutes in the car, Archer then woke up and he wasn't too happy. Now we are 2 hours into a 6 hour drive and Avalon still hasn't napped and Archer is crying, so we pull over to nurse him. It's about 4:30pm and shortly after we got back on the road, the service engine soon light started flashing. We were taking a route North of LA, so we were in the mountains and there wasn't much there. We finally found a place to pull off about 20 miles later. We found a service station and it was now 5pm. The mechanic had closed the shop, but he was still there, so he opened it back up for us.

Long story short (I know what you are thinking, this is the short version of the story?), he tried about three different things and nothing was working, so it looked like we'd be spending the night. It was now after 6pm, Jarad and Archer were watching the mechanic and Avie was sitting on the shop floor watching a TV show on the computer. I usually take pictures of everything, but I did not take any pictures while we were at the service station. It's hard to believe, isn't it? We'd obviously given up on Avie napping by now. It was freezing in the shop as it was around 35 degrees.

And finally to the good part of this story. I had been telling Avie all day that we would see Mummi and Ukki that night and then she asked me when we'd see them. So I told her we might not see them tonight because the car is broken. So Avie told me that we need to get some batteries to fix it. Then, the mechanic decided to try one more thing (changing the spark plugs). When he was done, he put the car back down and drove off the lift, and then Avie looked at me and said "We did it" and raised her hands above her head. She was so excited that the car was no longer broken. It was really sweet!

And sure enough, the car was fixed and it ran fine the rest of the trip. So we left the shop around 6:30pm and were back on the road. Needless to say, by this time we were all tired, hungry and cold. So we stopped right away in the nearest town, Palmdale, for dinner. We thought about Subway since it would be quick, but decided against it and we were so glad we did. We found a place called "Pizza and Pasta," where you order the food at the counter and then they bring it to you. It sounded good and they also had a big screen TV that was showing the Duke game. So it was a win win. I don't know if it was just because I was so hungry, but the pasta we had there was soooo good! We did make it to Vegas that night around midnight. It was a long day, but we were so glad to get there that night.

Here's a few pics from the restaurant. And yes, Avie is still watching her TV shows on the computer. But she did eat a ton of my spagetti pasta when the food came.

Archer slept fell asleep during the short car ride and then slept the whole time we were at the restaurant. He woke up just before we left.