We’re getting over the longest winter ever, it seems, and today it finally broke sixty degrees.  Nothing is more confusing than spring weather though–as I just looked at the forecast for the next week and on Friday there is a high of seventy-one and on Saturday we will be lucky to hit forty-five.  It’s even worse when you are a photographer and have many family and baby sessions outdoor scheduled in the next few weeks, and literally you have no idea what the day will bring.  My mini-sessions from this past weekend were postponed because they were supposed to be spring mini sessions–and it’s hard to pull that one off when the kids have to be dressed in parkas and mittens.

So it is though.  We deal with it.  And when we get a beautiful day, we try to take advantage of it.  The boys were out washing my van–Brayden begged me to hook up the hose.  I’m not quite ready for that though.  So buckets of warm water were used in it’s place.

My post actually is supposed to be about an adventure that we had last week.  One of those situations where I have learned to just roll with the punches.  In my old life, I would’ve cried, panicked and who knows what else.  It was the first day back from Spring Break.  James was back to work.  I went out to run some errands with the boys.  When we walked out of the second store, it was about 11:30 and we were going to go back home to eat.  My heart sank when I spotted our van and noticed that the back tire was completely flat.  It’s never happened to me before.  Sure, I’ve locked my keys in the car many times.  And I’ve broken down once.  But a flat tire, in a parking lot, with both boys with me, and being six months pregnant.  Yikes.  So I opened up all the little compartments in the back, searching for some secret compartment where the spare might be.  Couldn’t find anything.  I called AAA.  They told me if I didn’t have a spare, I would have to get towed.  Awesome.  I got off the phone with them.  Called James three times.  Nothing.  Called my friend, Sarah.  Nothing.  Texted my friend, Carrie.  Working.  Called James three more times.  Nothing.  Got a text from my friend, Samantha and told her my situation.  She offered to come bring Brayden to school but didn’t have room for all of us since she has four kids.  Finally, I read the manual for the van and learned that in fact, there was a spare.  But it was a terribly complicated logic puzzle to get the thing out.  No joke–it was like this.  Remove the jack from the compartment (which required screwing off some bolt things).  Remove the extra tool from the jack (also had to screw off something else to do this).  Locate the nut under the plastic cap on the floor of your van.  Put the tool in the hole and onto the nut.  Rotate a million times until a wire thing starts coming out from the bottom of your van.  When that has reached the ground, grab the wire thing and pull it hard enough to release the spare tire.

Ha ha.  I’m sure anyone who saw the big pregnant lady trying to manage to figure this one out got a good laugh.  Anyways, now that I knew I had a spare, I called AAA back, and they sent someone to help.  Forty-five minutes later (so about 1.5 total that I was sitting in the lot!!), someone arrived.  I had no food for the boys.  No toys.  Nothing.  Just my phone, which was thankfully enough.  The guy that came to help us couldn’t remove the spare from the van–useless, I know.  Perhaps they don’t pay these guys enough?  He tried filling the tire.  He couldn’t find the hole in the tire for awhile, until he realized that the side of the tire had dry rotted.  Before he figured out what it was he told me I would have to get towed.  How on earth was I going to do that with two kids with me and NOBODY around to help?  So I told him to fill it up as much as he could and I was just going to attempt to get home before it went flat again.  Which is what I did.

The adventure didn’t end there though.  We got home and I had about three minutes to give Brayden lunch.  Three minutes was obviously too long because he missed the bus.  And then I had to BRING him to school.  Thankfully there still was air in the tire and thankfully we live about two seconds from his school.  So after that’s all said and done, the van was parked in the driveway and about thirty minutes later the tire was completely flat.  James is a miracle worker, so somehow he managed to pry the spare off when he got home.  And the next day he took it in to get a new tire–of course, he had to get TWO new tires, because who just buys one?  Ouch.

The End.