Leaving San Antonio

Leaving was difficult, much like our time there in San Antonio. When we'd gone to bed the night before, everything was ready. The house empty and cleaned. Our bags were packed. We'd slept in a hotel so that we could get up and go. All we needed to do was drop off our keys, and we'd be done.

When we woke up, I had a feeling we weren't going to be able to leave that easily. Declan had had a cold for over a week. That morning he seemed to have moved on to something else. I had thought maybe an ear infection, but wasn't quite sure. I did know that he was sick enough to see a doctor and that I wanted some medications for him before we started our LONG journey to Utah. Sick babies and long car drives definitely don't go together.

Well our pediatrician isn't open on the weekends. We hunted around and finally found an after hours clinic that we could go to, but it wouldn't open until 11. It was so frustrating. Usually when we leave to go somewhere, we're never ready to leave on time. This was the first time we were actually ready, so I had been excited that we'd be able to leave as planned. Ha! That's what I get. We got ready and left to go take him to the doctor. Since we had lots of time to wait, we went and dropped off our keys to our landlord and then headed back to the clinic to wait in line for them to open.

About an hour later we were on our way back to the hotel with a diagnosis - sinus infection - and an antibiotic. Amen! The girls and my parents and siblings were at the parking lot when we got to the hotel, so we said our goodbyes and got on the road. Since it was lunchtime, we decided to get some lunch and gas in Boerne (a city outside of San Antonio), so we wouldn't have to stop for a bit. Again, San Antonio did not want to let go, and another problem popped up. As we were driving into Boerne, the check engine light came on, and our car started revving low. I looked up in the manual what we should do it, and it was one of those "Go see a mechanic immediately" warning. AHHHHHH!!!! I was dying. I just couldn't believe it. The light had briefly come on a few weeks earlier, but we'd been busy with errands and graduation and stuff and it had gone away, so we hadn't done anything about it. We headed to an auto parts store to get a free check-up. They told us our fuel injectors were dirty and needed to be cleaned. They told us a quick mechanic shop we could go to. At the shop, they said the injectors were so dirty that it'd require a deep cleaning by a mechanic, something they didn't do at their quick shop. We couldn't believe it. Fortunately, Tom's dad is a mechanic, so we gave him a call. He told us what to do so that we'd get to Utah, and then we could get things checked out there. We bought a few bottles of fuel injector cleaner that gets put in your gas tank when you fill up, put a bottle in, and FINALLY headed out of town.

I think it was around 1:30 or 2 at that point. I had already reserved a hotel in Albuquerque, and it was supposed to be no cancellations, so we had to get to Albuquerque that night. Since it's a 12 hour drive I was worried. Plus I was bummed because I'd found a hotel room with 2 closed off bedrooms and an outer area that would have been perfect for the 8 of us. Again, there went our well laid plans.

By the time we in the middle of nowhere in west Texas, I realized there was not way we'd make it to Albuquerque unless we drove until 2 am, which I did not want to do. I made a call to our hotel, told them our situation (it helps to explain things . . . everything), and got a phone number for the same hotel in El Paso. I was still worried that we'd get charged for both hotels because I had made the reservation online and was told no cancellations, but knew we just couldn't make it to Albuquerque. We made it to our hotel in El Paso about 11 that night.

We were so tired that we didn't get up quite as early as I would have liked, but did get on the road about 9:30. Since we had a shorter trip the day before, we had a much longer ride ahead of us. Plus the moving van maxxed out at 65 mph and had to refill about every 200 miles, which slowed us up a lot.

(This is Payden in our hotel in Moab.)

By the time we hit Cortez, CO, I knew I didn't want to drive late into the night just to get there. We decided to stop in Moab, so we could get a good night's sleep and then head out in the morning. Since it would be around a 3-4 hour drive, Karin and I ditched Tom, the Boy, and the moving van on Monday morning and got to Cynthia's house as quickly as possible. About 2 hours after us, Tom and David finally arrived.

Despite the major delays, it was a good trip. The kids did really well. They watched a lot of movies, colored, played with stickers (and dumped them all over the back of the car . . . ahem, Taylor), and honestly did a good job. Declan did really well, especially considering he was a sick baby. We stayed on top of his antibiotic and pain medications and that seemed to make it okay. Karin did ended up moving from the front seat to the middle seat and back about a billion times to help out with the kids. Near the end of our trip, I joked that we should have counted the number of times she had to go back there because it was a lot. The other surprising thing was that west Texas was actually green. I have driven this road many times, and I don't ever remember it being green. Plus there were a lot of rain clouds along the way. It did rain some, but mostly we just got cloudy skies and were protected from having the sun beating down on us. By the second day, the check engine light went off and everything seemed normal with the car.

We were grateful to make it to Cynthia's house with out many problems. Tom and I are especially grateful to Karin and David for being willing to sit in a car/van for many many hours to help us move. We couldn't have done it without them. Thank you!