I'm back baby!!

10 Things I learned this Thanksgiving

1) If you leave on a long trip at 2:00 in the morning, thinking the kids will sleep most of the way, your thinking may be completely wrong.

2) A human being can easily live on pumpkin pie alone.

3) Renting a house is fun, but you have to cook and do dishes…which is not always fun.

4) If boys play video games for 2 days straight, they can still communicate with real people if engaged.

5) It turns out, I no longer want an electric flat surface cook top. It is way too stressful to keep clean.

6) 12 people generate more garbage in 4 days than one would think. This is especially apparent if the garbage can in the garage only fits two bags of said garbage.

7) Husbands may be reluctant to go shopping on Black Friday, but if they do, they are more apt to impulse shop than any other.

8) If you have a million desserts around, your diabetics WILL want to eat them... for breakfast, lunch, dinner AND all the snacks in between.

9) If your car is only two years old, this does not mean it will not break down when you are 380 miles from home.

10) Rental car companies want your first born child if you need a van only going one way into another state.

Thanksgiving was great. Really, really great. Lots of great family, lots of great food, and lots of room in this awesome house I found through weeks of blood, sweat and tears searching the web.

Black Friday was great. Really, really great. Lots of deals, lots of electronics bought, lots of movies for the ride home bought for 3.99. The line around Target almost gave me a mini seizure, but my sister in law and I took turns waiting in line and shopping. We were quite the tag team.

The diabetic’s sugars were great. Really, really great. L did have high sugars one night, but otherwise everything went pretty smoothly. I owe most of the success to Lawton. I could be aggressive with the boluses because I knew he would alert me if there was a potential problem…which he did. Man, I really take that dog for granted sometimes…

The food I ate was great. Really, really great. Lots of desserts (Hello pie, cookies, donuts, fudge and apple bread!), and lots of Thanksgiving dinner leftovers. A lotta love went into each dish, for sure.

The ride home sucked. Really, really sucked.

Our car…our NEWISH car….our 2 ½ years old car…broke.

It just broke.

I woke up a couple hours into our trip home with my hubby pulling off the road. “Are we getting gas?” I asked. “No” he replied, “Our car is overheating.” And sure enough there was smoke and all sorts of warnings on our dash, including our stabilitrak shutting down. We added water to the engine, but the sensor still went all the way to nuclear hot. We have OnStar and they were pretty helpful…a little too perky for the moment if you know what I mean, but helpful none the less. Not one repair shop was open on Sunday in the ho-bunk town we were in. Our OnStar plan would tow us to the nearest Saturn dealer, 88 miles away in Medford, Oregon… going west…we needed to go south to Cali. So we said goodbye to the tow truck driver and our SUV, and rented a van to get home. You should have seen us making the drive to the rental place in our broke car…we were so pathetic. My hubby would drive to get the car up to speed, and then turn it off to coast in neutral as long as we could. It was seriously a miracle we made it there.

We still have no idea what is wrong with the car and we still have no idea how we’ll get it back.

Our 8 hour trip home turned to 13. The kids couldn’t watch the movies I bought, so it was up to them to entertain themselves. L in particular was sitting in the very back of the van by himself…bored to death. He sang the ABC’s at least 30 times, using different voices. The other boys took turns passing around the only Nintendo DS with battery life.

We are safe and sound at home, and that is all that matters. My dad dropped off his old van for us to use…the boys have to take off one shoe while we drive to swat the spiders that happen to crawl by…but we are EXTRAEMLY thankful to have something to get around in.

I’m a little overwhelmed getting ready for Christmas…and I am behind reading blogs…and missed the Sunday chat because of our car debacle…I feel out of the loop…and I love my loop. I want to be back in the loop!

So here is my first, rather lame attempt of a post to get back into the loop…
I’m back baby!!

P.S. Note to self…never ever allow the boys to eat Captain Crunch again. EVER. I don't care if you ARE on vacation..Don't do it!