Making a Maine vacation...Well... "Memorable"

Annabelle went on her first vacation last week and did so well. I ended up taking all four kids by myself up to Maine for a three day two night vatation. The drive is about 3hrs long so the kids packed all their favorite toys and puzzle books but excitement got the better of them and they just couldn't help but to ask every 10 min if we we're there yet..lol The hum on our vanagon finally lulled them to sleep for the rest of the drive. When we finally got there the timing was perfect because Annabelle was stirring for her 3hr feeding. It felt good to finally be with our good friends and to have made it safe and sound. My husband worries about that and for good reason to my vanagon is getting old but it's still a good van and we all love it like it's another member of the family.

So after a good feeding for Annabelle it was off to the beach for all of us...oh and did I mention that the other family we met up there has six kids..so between to both of us that's a whopping 10 kids and surprisingly they all play so wonderfully together they are all best friends. 

We actually spent most of the vacation days at the beach. The first two days we're beautiful, sunny enough for a beach day but not to hot where I worried about Annabelle being at the beach all day. It was such a wonderful vacation almost to peaceful with all those kids...so of course the plot must thicken...hehehe

Well it's the last day and much chillier then the previous days so we decided to visit the penny candy store, and stop at the beach for one last visit and to eat our packed lunch before we headed out for our long trip with four kiddos. All went to plan we visited the beach and the kids picked out their favorite candy for the ride home so we decided to leave earlier then our friends because I wanted the kids to finish their father's day gift and bake some cookies for him too. Unfortunately he's still waiting for those cookies...lol 

We said our good byes and headed off  until I notice the temp light flashing so I pull over and restart the van it stopped flashing so I'm off again and just turned to get on the highway and guess what happened again... Yup that temp light started flashing as well as the temp gauge so I pulled over again and thought maybe I should try to let it cool down so there we sat on the side of the highway....Kids tired and butterfly's in mommy's stomach, trying to get a hold of my hubby. NO luck getting a hold of him...did I mention that he wasn't able to come on this vacation because it was so busy at his work...ahhhh

Well it was about 15min so I decide to see if I could at least drive to the next exit because I  really wasen't comfortable having all the kids on the side of the highway...But I didn't even get a 1/4 of a mile down the road before I had to pull over again (in a spot that's even worse then the previous one) because not only did the temp gage sky rocket but Ricky noticed smoke comming from the back of our van....YIKES

So I tried to get a hold of hubby again and succeeded he's able to calm me down and told  me to call our friends to see if they can come and help me. When my friends came my husband talks us through a few tests for the van to see if we can diagnose the problem over the phone...but nope it's not our lucky day. We finally decide to ditch the van and GET OFF THE HIGHWAY to the next exit which was only a 1/4 mile down the road. So we piled in our friends van and might I add that my friend has an eight passanger van (yeah I'm sure you can do the math and figure out that their wasn't enough seats for us all to fit legally)...It felt like a clown car when we got off the next exit and all 13 of us piled out of the van. We ended up finding a craft store and got a few crafts for the kids to keep busy for the next three hours while my hubby and mother-in-law made their way up with a tow dolly. We made it the three hours with our sanity but just barely by this point the little ones were so tired and my friends littlest one is wheezing because he needs a breathing treatment...like I said the plot really thickened..lol

Well hubby finally got there and we were off and on our way home...We didn't make it home till almost 11:00pm, because we had to drive under the speed limit because we we're towing the van plus we had to stop to feed Annabelle.  Oh and did I mention that I have a paper route and am suppose to deliver that night at 2:00am. But I have to get up at 1:00 these days because I need to make sure Annabelle is fed and diaper changed since I'm still nursing and it takes about 3hrs to deliver my 247 papers. Luckily my dad helped me out (did I mention he's the best dad ever) and put all my papers together and bagged them for me so I was able to sleep an extra hour. Father's day was more of a recovering day them anything...although Rick my husband did add a twisty slide (that our neighbor found used for us) to our play scape which the kids enjoyed oh so much!! We also enjoyed some good company from my brother-in-law and his son so together we did have a fun laid back day hanging out by the new twisty slide. 

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