Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Rose Garden

Henry, with his beloved Bella

A city near us has an amazing public rose garden that I love to visit. For a long while it was Henry's number one choice if he got to pick where we would go for a fun adventure. We have been so busy with other things that we haven't been to the rose garden in over a year!

The week after school got out, my friend Kim and I packed up a picnic lunch and loaded all the kids in the car for an afternoon at the rose garden. We arrived right around lunch time. The kids were getting giddy as I flipped the car around to park alongside the curb.

That's when it happened.
I ran right into the curb. It was a nice loud thump, so the kids all got quiet and asked what had happened. Sheepishly, I continued parking the van and hopped out to take a look. It is a tall curb, and I figured I had dented the fender near the front tire, as it sits pretty low.

No such luck. I had actually scraped the tire right along the curb, which put a nice long scratch/hole in the side of the tire.
No problem, I've changed tires before. In fact, I'm pretty good at it!
But I hadn't ever changed a tire on my van before. Do you think I knew where to find the spare tire....or the jack for that matter?
Nope.
So I called my husband at work. He answered right away, but said, "I'm on the other line. I'll call you back."

Hmmm....
Kim called her husband at his work (which was thankfully only a few blocks from where we were!). He came right over and found the tire AND the jack (which were in completely different areas of the car!) and changed the tire for me.

The boys enjoyed the show:
THANKS, CHRIS! YOU SAVED OUR DAY! :)

If it wasn't already embarrassing enough, I had just picked up some leftover garage sale items to drop off at Goodwill. They were in the way when we were looking for the spare, so they got put out on the curb....and then spread around by my really helpful daughter. There will not be a picture of that. ;)

The kids were actually quite patient throughout that whole ordeal, but they were quite hungry by the time it was finished! We went in and had a nice picnic, let the kids run around a bit, and then headed out to finish dealing with the tire.

What's that? You thought it was over? Um...no.

The spare was almost completely flat.

So I had to limp the car to the nearest service station and have air put in the tire.

And Sam had finally gotten back to me. He had somewhat recently bought tires for the van and wanted the replacement tire to match. He had bought them from a distributor further on into the city. A distributor which, by the way, does not install tires.

So we went and bought the new tire and then drove across town again to have it installed at the least expensive place.

The kids and I didn't get home until almost six that night.

Good thing Sam doesn't mind pizza for dinner! :)

2 comments:

Heidi Jo Comes said...

boy those are the days when you need His grace, aren't they? somewhere around the first flat tire i would have been in panic mode...because unlike you, i have absolutely NO confidence in my ability to change one!

glad you arrived home safely!

Andrea said...

I've never changed a tire either. Patrick always comes and rescues me, thank goodness.
What a long day.