She slept through it all

Preface which will likely give away the "punch line":
Before embarking on this trip (can you embark in a van?), we had new tires put on the van 2 weeks ago. Costco had an amazing deal, and we had been told that we needed to replace them soon. So we did.

We've been travelling for most of the past week. Since Ben had the week off for American Thanskgiving, I agreed to go play with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra for the weekend. Yay! We drove to London where we saw the foundation of our house and realized that yes, we will have a nice, big backyard. Grandpa came down to pick up Rachel and Ben, and off they went to Toronto for a few days. I got to catch up with some friends before heading back down to Windsor.

The concert was Saturday night. By 10:15 we were in the car since Windsor is about 12-13 hours from Kansas City and we wanted to drive a few hours before stopping for the night. Just after midnight, Ben was too tired to drive so we stopped at a hotel but they were in the middle of a computer audit and couldn't check room availability for another 10-15 minutes. Since I was still awake, we decided to drive on. We were contemplating trading off and driving straight through the night since it is much more pleasant to drive with a sleeping kid than with a 2.5 year old who repeatedly says things like, "And then where are we going?", "I want to stand up!" and "I want to take off my seatbelt!"

Off we went, through Michigan and down into Ohio. At about 1:15, I heard a loud popping sound. At first I wondered if something had just fallen down from the stuff in the back of the van. Ben thought it might have been a big piece of debris on the road. Then the sound registered - it sounded just like a tire blow-out.

I pulled over on the shoulder, and sure enough, our right rear tire was as flat as a pancake. (Ok, it wasn't quite that flat but we're going for extra drama here!)

Luckily, Ben had changed a tire once on our old Honda Accord, so out he went to put on the spare while we both freaked out a little and were thankful that Rachel was sound asleep in the back. About 45 minutes later, the spare was on and we decided to drive down the road to the next little town. We were hoping for a Costco nearby, but when we checked in at the hotel, we were told that there weren't any within an hour of where we were. Ah, the irony. Here we were with our brand new tires and one of them had blown out. It just goes to show that you never know what will happen. Ironically enough, this did happen right after a conversation about how life needs to slow down and people need to relax more and rest more. Ha!

We finally got to bed at around 3am. Rachel slept through the whole thing including being transferred to the hotel bed. This has never happened before.

By 7:30, we were all up. We had been told that there was a Wal-Mart with a tire centre in the next town, so we called and found out that they would be opening at 9am. Sadly, the Wal-Mart across the street from the hotel did not have a tire centre. By 10:15am we had a new tire on our van and were on our way. The tire guy had initially thought that perhaps we could patch the tire, but no, there was a huge hole in it so that was no longer an option.

Rachel was surprisingly cheerful for most of the car trip. It might have something to do with her new, "cheap, yellow baby" as she calls it. ($0.97 for a tiny little baby doll dressed in yellow clothes. For the amount of time it bought us on the road, we were very impressed!)

In the evening, we both remembered that going through St. Louis was a bad idea since traffic was basically stopped. We both remembered that this had happened last year too. In any case, we arrived back at our apartment by 10:30pm after a 15 hour day on the road. So much for saving time by driving last night!

It's 7am on Monday morning and Ben and Rachel are still sleeping. I have to teach Kindermusik in 2 hours, and before that groceries must be bought, things must be unpacked and above all, I need to wake up! Later today I imagine that one of us will have the courage to read the Costco warranty (which was unfortunately sitting on our coffee table at home rather than in the van) and see if we stand a chance of getting our money back.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! ;)