trip story

last december, when my parents were here, mom said she wanted to have a few of the kids spend some time out with them (kansas city) during the summer. things happened, other trips were necessary, and they couldn't get kids out there for a reasonable price. we had recently been gifted a suburban (more on that later), and it was in better shape than the other cars we have. if was more cost effective to fix the few problems the suburban had, and pay for gas, than it was to get just the older 2 kids out there. so, we fixed the front doors, attempted to fix the cargo door, and headed to kansas city for a couple of weeks.

the trip out there was extremely uneventful. the suburban worked beautifully, and the kids were amazing! we thought we could miss most of the heat by driving all night, but we ended up hitting nebraska during the day, with 100+ temps. even with the spray bottle, and windows open (cause the a/c doesn't work), it was a hot and miserable drive.

while we were out there, we did a few more things to the suburban. some was needed, some were problems that popped up while we were there. **the joke was that we only had to drive 1300 miles to get it fixed.**
as we knew that it is old, and had quirks, we did some basic maintenance on it. checks on the air filter, old, but clean; found a hose connector that was severely damaged, replaced it and now it runs MUCH better; changed the oil, put in some fuel and oil system cleaners, tightened up the mirrors (they would end up pushed into the car from the wind of just driving), added more transmission fluid when we started having issues with that system. my brother got the broken key out of the ignition, and dad got copies made.

i have an old roommate who lives in the area, and we met up at a park and let her girls and the 3 little ones play. much fun was had by all!

nathan, my 12-year-old brother tried to set up a conference call for my sisters and i. apparently, i missed the memo, cause i wasn't part of it.

we had some friends stop by for a few minutes on their way through to tennessee (now they might leave us permanently for tennessee. i might have to disable their cars somehow...).

we had sick kids, and sick parents, and sick grandparents part of the time. we extended our trip a few days to try and make up for that, but we still didn't do a whole lot.