With Love ♥

Well, we left today headed to Virginia. Just mom, me and Tash. We decided we wouldn't have enough time to go to D.C., and that we'd save that for when I get picked up in May. But we still planned to see Yorktown, Jamestown, maybe Williamsburg, Monticello, and Mt. Vernon.

We left at 9 in the morning, and even found a Qdoba's to eat at. It wasn't open...so we went to Taco Bell...that's like the difference between The Ivy and Mcdonald's for me. We drove all the way to Louisville, Kentucky. Our plans were to go much further. But the car was acting up. It was guzzling gas and the air conditioning turned hot. The car almost overheated. So we slowed down a little and turned the A.C. off. But the engine kept revving, and even with the windows rolled down, it was miserable. The car had been taken in for a tune-up specifically for this trip, so we figured it was fine. But we called my dad and he said we should just have it checked on real quick. Luckily, we found a place, but it was closing for Saturday night. They weren't even going to help us but my mom kept persisting. And they were very nice and helped us. If not, we'd have had to wait til Monday morning just for the inspection. It took quite a while, and they said it looked like there's holes in our radiator and a gasket blew, and if we would've gone much longer, we would have blown the engine. Good thing we stopped.

So, we can still drive the car about a mile, slowly. And they're going to look at replacing the radiator early Monday morning. Luckily, there's a Subaru place right around the corner. Maybe we can even get one of our keys replaced! Huzzah!

So...now we have less time to site-see, and HOPEFULLY they'll have the right parts to replace and that there isn't anymore serious problems. But we're being prayerful and faithful. It's just a little bump in road on our adventure. :) It's been really hard to say goodbye to everyone. And I've been on an emotional roller coaster, going from sad to leave home, to stressed that everything won't work out and I'll end up hating college, to a calm feeling of every thing's going to work out, to super excited to just hurry and get there and soak up college life. I'm a walking contradiction. I loved the extra week of no work, getting extra time to say goodbye to people and slowly packing and spending time with my family. And as tearful as I was this morning, I just wanted to hurry and get there, and now this.

But, I'm really starting to believe that everything DOES happen for a reason. This is where my dad would say, "Good luck=bad luck!" And things could've been much worse. Classes could've been starting this Monday, creating huge problems time wise, I could've been alone, we could've not made it this far, we could've blown the engine, on the side of the road on this hot day, because we ignored the problem and just kept going. AND there's lots of hotels and restaurants walking distance from the auto repair place :) So we got to go to Olive Garden, which I haven't been to in years. The sad part is, we can't go to church because it's too far of a drive. Oh, and the weird thing is, my mom was talking to us this morning about recognizing the feeling of being irritated as a warning sign that you're about to act or say something in a negative way. So instead, it should be an invitation to be positive and react in a Christlike way. Gosh, I'm sitting here preaching when it's all about myself and silly car problems.

Well I hope we make it there in one piece! Who knows what kind of a blessing in diguise this is :)
P.S. We read The Giver together in the car today and finished it. We loved it, except the ending is vague, and we don't like those.