A Day in the Life: What Does That Light Mean?

Today was one of those great days that you won't forget for a long time.

It started off like most days...A woke up and we had breakfast, kissed daddy good-bye, then spent some time running around the house before the getting dressed struggled started. I stripped, chased, caught, and got A redressed in record time today and was pretty please that I was going to be able to make my workout. After a final run though of what we needed for the morning...library books-check, sippy cup-check, snacks-check, check, and check, raincoat-check...we headed off for our morning.

Apparently getting raincoats on and getting in the car took a lot longer than planned so I scratched my workout and we headed to the new house to see daddy before our 10:30am playdate. After a fast run through with daddy and a quick stop over to see Gigi, A and I high-fived as we got back in the car because we still had enough time to run to the library and switch books before our playdate! (On a side note...there weren't any books that we LOVED enough last week to blog about, but stay tuned.)

Scoring first spot in front of the library, we dashed inside to return and check out more books. After 7 minutes we were already heading back to the car: calm, confident, and psyched to go to Kiddie Crusoe to play!

That is when I got the call. Nicole, my BMF (best mom friend) called, which was nothing unusual since we were headed to meet them at K.C, but when I picked up the phone and heard the distressed sigh, I quickly asked what was wrong. Naturally, having kids, I feared the worst...something bad about E. But luckily everyone was perfectly fine and safe...well sort of. Nicole has been having car trouble recently, so when her car stated acting funny on the highway on her way out to K.C she pulled over to call her hubby. Just as she had finished dialing and pressed talk, she glanced down to see her gas tank below the line, and the little light warning her to get to a station soon blaring in her face. After quickly hanging up with her hubby before he picked up, she called for back-up.

Yep, you guessed it...she ran out of gas...on the highway.

After she explained the situation to me, A and I made a quick U turn and hit the closest gas station for some fuel-to-go. Apparently gas stations do not sell fuel-to-go (which seems like a stupid idea to me, but who am I to know). So after some serious bargaining and a $10.00 deposit they let me borrow their little portable gas tank. As the gas attendant retrieved the tank and held it out to me I freeze. One, I have no idea how these things work, and two, I am holding A, who is getting more antsy by the second. He must have read the expression on my face, because he quickly offered to fill up the little tank for me. Phew! Problem averted.

After thanking him profusely and promising to return the tank (and collect my $10 bucks) before lunch, I was on the road to rescue Nicole and E. Now, my hubby always tells me how terrible I am with giving directions, but I think it is a girl thing. Nicole and I have lived in the same city forever and it still took us about 4 tries to figure out exactly where she was. This may seem like a lot, but one of our highways splits from 83 and becomes 695 for a mile before you can take the option to get back on 83 again. Clearly this makes giving directions tricky, especially since I couldn't be going the wrong way and easily skip a full gas tank across 6 lanes of highway traffic to save my friend.

But with my minutes being dangerously close to overage charges, I found Nicole and E and we filled up her tank. Then after safely merging onto a major highway (yes, it took about 5 minutes for there to be a nice big gap I could pull out onto) we headed for our playdate at K.C.

Here are a few things I learned today and some pictures from our adventure.

1. It is very hard to get gas from the little tank, into a car.

2. One gallon of fuel can take a car 15-20 miles!

3. Highway traffic is a whole lot scarier when you are on the shoulder (even the one we were on, which is the size of about 3 lanes of traffic).

4. Everyone should have AAA.

5. Nicole claims she has a big IOU with my name on it...hummm...I think the next Starbucks run is on her!

6. Watching the kids laugh and play made the whole morning seems completely insignificant.

This was my big gas station helper!

When we finally got to K.C. the first stop was the ball pit! Normally this is not somewhere A is aloud, but they claim to wash the pit and balls each night...so here's hoping!