WHY!?!

You would absolutely not believe the luck Brian and I seem to have when we travel without one another!!!

So yesterday was the all important "Daddy's Coming Home" Day, that I made sure to tell Emma and Jake and Gus a million times! They were excited, I was excited. I should have known when I checked Brian's flight status out of London, and it had left late, that, that was not a good sign.

Come 5:40pm, I called Brian, because I needed to leave for the airport in five minutes and wanted to make sure I was there when he got there, but that his flight out of Dallas was actually on time. He answers his phone, I ask if his flight is on time and his response was "Well, we're going to be lucky if we even make the flight!" They had flown into Concourse D, had to go through customs, go collect their bag, take it back to customs, have their shoes washed that they wore out in the sheep pasture, and then recheck their bags, and make it to Concourse A. They arrived to the gate, shortly after they had shut the door, and moved the walk way. They missed their flight by less than 5 minutes!

So Brian calls me to let me know (I stopped driving and turned around), and informs me they got another flight out of Dallas at 10pm Texas time (an hour behind us). I was like, um yeah, okay I guess that works. (Note: it takes almost exactly an hour and half to get to El Paso from the house, and a flight from Dallas to El Paso also takes about a half hour. ) I decided the best plan was to keep Emma up if she'd cooperate. No big deal, she was great, and within minutes of getting in her car seat she was out. I got a call from Brian that they had indeed gotten on the plane.

I notice a strange noise the car is making, a rattling noise. It had been making a rattling noise since we got back from vacation, both Brian and I listened to it, decided it was a heat shield, and it could wait till he got back from London. Well last nights rattling noise didn't quite seem the same, as it seemed to do it all the time rather than just when the rpms were high. (NOTE: Looking back I think I had a gut feeling that this wasn't going to end well.)

We get to El Paso (Emma slept the whole way!), Brian arrives in El Paso on time! HURRAY! We get Brian's bag!! HURRAY! Everything is going smoothly! We get into the car, and point out the rattling to Brian, we sorta decide its the same heat shield. About 45 minutes into the trip, on a road where there are 4 big things to look at on the way to El Paso (Boarder Patrol, a VERY SMALL town, where if you blink you miss it, a prison, and the Texas/New Mexico Line!), we here a great big thunk, and then immediately the battery light comes on (NOTE: I'm driving, Brian has been awake most of 23 hours at this point, and we just passed a sign that says Alamogordo 46 miles). Brian tells me to pull the car over, and I do. He goes to the glove box to get out the free, cheap mini flashlights we have in the glove box. The first one he grabs doesn't work, he looks for the other one, and asks me where it is. I respond with, well Emma was playing with it the other day in the car, it was keeping her happy. At this point, neither one of us was excited about the situation. He tells me to pop the trunk, and he hunts through his luggage for his flashlight that he takes testing with him. Finds it, and checks the hood. As he suspected, we lost a belt, NO not just any belt, the serpentine belt, the belt that runs your alternator so your car makes power and doesn't use your battery up.

He gets back in the car, sifts through the insurance stuff, irritated because he can't find the Road Side Assistance number, while I sift through my wallet to find our insurance company's information, with the number on it. He called it in, which was challenging to explain to the lady just how in the middle of no where we are. I think we're about 10 miles south of the only town between El Paso and Alamogordo, and about a mile south of the prison (I can see the lights in the horizon), and we know we just passed the 46 miles to Alamogordo sign. She was struggling to grasp just how in the middle of no where we were. (NOTE: Brian could hear the coyotes barking/crying while he was checking under the hood). He lets her know that there are three of us, including a 15 month old (who was crying in the background, because she refused to sleep after El Paso.) She lets us know she'll call someone to come tow us back to Alamogordo, and we'll get an automated message with how long it will be.

Shortly after he hangs up he gets a call and its the tow truck guy. (Note: we've only been running our four way flashers when there are cars coming so that we don't run our battery down, and we don't get nausious!) He tells us he'll call us when he gets to that small town, and right after he passes the prison he'll turn his big lights on so we can see him coming and turn our lights on. He says it will be about an hour. Brian reminds him there are three of us, one of which is a 15 month old in a car seat. He explains he has two seats, but we can sit on one another.

About 45 minutes later he arrives, gets the car on, and we all get crammed into the cab. Emma was mesmerized by the whole experience, and was still awake. We make it through Boarder Patrol (the guy had the nerve to ask if we broke down, the lights are going on the tow truck, and I'm sitting on my husband's lap. We wanted to say "No, we just thought it would be fun to have our car towed, and be crammed into the front of a cab!" but choose to keep our comments to our self till after we had pulled away. I think somewhere, someone was playing a joke on us, because we hadn't seen one another in two weeks, the kind of closeness I WAS looking forward to last night didn't involve being crammed into the front of a cab on my husband's lap, with my knees crushed into the dashboard for 46 miles! (His leg and my butt both fell asleep!)

We decided to have the car towed to the place in town where we bought the truck. We've had some work done there before, and they are nice, and haven't screwed us. The tow truck guy notifies us he won't be able to take us home, only to there. So we decide to call the base operator and have them put us through to the cab company that has access to base, because we love our friends, and still want them to love us when this is all over!

We pull into Alamogordo between 200 and 230 am (Emma fell asleep just outside of town, of course!) Get the car off, the key in their over night box, and get everything packed into the cab. We get to base, and they tell the drive they need to search the van. WHY OF COURSE! BECAUSE THATS JUST THE WAY OUR DAY IS GOING! She's a new driver, and her name isn't on their list of people they can let on unaccompanied, and apparently we don't count. She lets them know our car broke down, and he calls security forces to come escort us. NOTE: The last time we called security forces, because we needed them (we got backed into in the parking lot at the BX, when I was 9 months pregnant, and it was 100+ degrees outside), it took them 45 minutes to respond. Finally after what seemed like forever but was probably only five minutes, they arrive, and we finally pull into our drive way shortly after 300am.

Things we are thankful for:
1) The car broke down with Brian in the car, not Tuesday when I took my mom to the airport, or on the way home, or on the way to El Paso to get Brian.
2) We have Road Side Assistants, because I can only imagine how much it would have been to have the car towed 46 miles!
3) Our daughter is once again a trooper, and when we really, really need her to cooperate she does!
4) We can find humor in the craziness that sometimes is our life.
5) AND most of all, one another, because without Brian and Emma, I'd fall apart!!

So if anyone can explain to use WHY these things happen to us, we'd love to hear it!!!