And now my Jeep is gone,,,,,

Man, this blog of mine is turning into quite the downer. I just seem to have some bad luck this month. Before I tell you the Jeep story let me just say that we have opened up a new checking account, we have received our new debit cards and check book, a friend of mine bought me new DVD players for the kids since we were road tripping it for a few days and I might die without them, we got print outs of our social security numbers and mine and Matt's cards are ordered, I got my new drivers license and the homeowners claim for the ring and everything else is going pretty smooth right now. Just waiting for them to get a copy of the police report and then it's pretty much done and they can cut me a check so I can go and get my new ring.

There, with that out of the way I can tell you my Jeep story. And you know since I love detail, this may be on the longer side. And I will point out that after this post I am really going to try and have more upbeat posts, I mean, come on, something good is bound to happen to me one of these days.

So Tuesday was our big day. We were taking a 2 1/2 hour road trip to PA to go to Idlewild!!!! We got all packed and left the house around 3pm. About oh, I don't know, 1 hour and 45 minutes in the trip, the Jeep (that we just bought in February, used of course) overheated, we pulled off the turnpike and everything was dry. My husband always has a thing of water in the car so he poured it in, well, I guess that wasn't enough. We resorted to pouring about 10 or so bottles of water in too. So there went all my water for the trip :(

After it cooled down, we took off!! About a mile after we left, it over heated again. I tried driving a little bit cause hubby was trying to get in to stop by playing with the heater and such but it started to shake so bad that I got really scared and pulled off the side of the road. Hubby got out, popped the hood and NOTHING!! Not a drop of coolant or water anywhere. Hubby, who is just plain awesome with cars and really knows his stuff, informed me that we were screwed. After tinkering with it for a few minutes, he gets in the car and again tells me we are screwed. And of course I ask why and he responds "it's dead". Apparently the engine has a cracked block.

So we kinda sit there for like 10 minutes just trying to figure out what to do. We are on the turnpike, right before a construction zone, no air, no nothing. We are 95 miles from home and 35 miles from the hotel...... What to do???

So we call *11, which is like the PA turnpike assistance peeps and they tell us they are sending a tow truck. And at this point we have no idea where we are even going to go. Oh, I should mention we called the tow truck at 5:25pm.

So tow truck dude shows up at 6:35, we convince him to take the Jeep to our hotel and he tells us it's $75 to hook it up and $3.50 per mile, so again we are screwed but we tell him to do it anyways - which btw, ends up costing us $170.00!!!!

So Matt rides with the tow truck guy and the kids and I have to ride with the PA turnpike First Responders people. Now here's the fun part. These First Responders are only allowed to work certain legs of the turnpike. So we get in the truck with the first guy and he tells me that he can only take me as far as the next rest stop which is like 4 miles and then another Responder will pick us up there. So whatever, that's fine.

We get to the rest stop at 7pm. And AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER the other Responder shows up. At this point my hubby is already at the hotel, the kids are about ready to kill each other, I am about ready to kill the kids and the new responder tells me the farthest he can take me is the McDonald's right off the exit!!! SOOOOOO, that still leaves me about 12 miles away from our hotel. But he was nice and told me "at least is the Big Mac museum" WTF!!! Like I really care if it's the Big Mac Museum, I hate Big Macs!!

So then I tell him, that was alright, I will just call a cab to come pick up me and my children and have them take us to the hotel. At this point he informs me that Greensburg, PA HAS NO TAXIS!!!

I am soooooo upset at this point (I think I had like 7-8 breakdowns by this point) I called my hubby all frantic cause I didn't know what else to do. I told him to run to the front desk and ask them for help.

Ask and you shall receive.

The hotel has a shuttle. They are only supposed to go in a 3 mile radius but they came all the way out and picked us up. I am eternally grateful.

So blah blah blah, we get to the hotel about 9:45, the kids run wild, we eat, get the kids ready for bed and all that fun stuff. Then it's time to talk about the Jeep.

I won't bore you with all the small details but we pretty much decided to rent a small U Haul truck then rent a towing trailer. It was about $200 for a one way trip. We priced it out and the tow company wanted about $650 to tow it back and Penske was $899 just for the truck to rent one way - INSANE!!!! So I hopped on line and booked everything.

Through all this we had family calling is out the wazoo cause I am dumb and posted a status update on Facebook even before I called anyone and told them what was going on. Cause at that point I just wanted to veg on the computer and I really didn't wanna have to explain everything cause I was already a wreck.

So again, long story short, it was decided that my sister in law, Samantha, (hubby's brothers wife) her dad was going to bring his big truck (cause it can fit all of us), then hook the towing trailer to that and tow us home. And that only cost us $100. And that's exactly what happened. He came Thursday morning, they got the Jeep all squared away on the trailer thing and we loaded the kids up and took off. We made it home in one piece, the STUPID JEEP is sitting in the drive dead as a door nail and I keep have anxiety attacks.

Cause you know we don't have the funds to fix it and we don't have the funds for a new car. I am using my grandma's 02 Buick LaSabre right now and it's amazing, but that's only temporary.

And as far as our vacation went We didn't go to Idlewild on Wednesday as planned, but good news is that it rained ALL DAY Wednesday, so we would of been rained out anyways. We went to Eat N Park for lunch then to CVS (cause we could walk there), then lots o swimming in the hotel. We had the shuttle take us to the mall where we walked around then we found the best place ever..... CHUCK E CHEESE. As crappy as hubby and I were feeling, we had to think about the kids, and this is one of their favorite places and of course they had a blast.

I just keep telling Emma, when they ask you on your first day of school "what did you do on summer vacation?", please don't tell them the truck broke down and we got stuck on the turnpike for 5 hours then we went to Eat N Park.......