Let's get home...

It was almost starting to get to that point in our trip by the time we abandoned the coastal drive. We carried on and tried to make the best of our new plan.

As we drove our means of entertaining Nolan consisted of one or more of the following at any given time...

songs

puppet show

throwing a ball in the air

toys

toys

toys

clapping

practicing new tricks (where's mom, where's dad, where's mom's nose, can you clap?, etc.)

Finding Nemo (this was a last resort and worked for 20 minute increments)

Little Mermaid (same result as Finding Nemo)

Peek-a-boo

Dancing

Stories

Reading the map

Playing with mom's cell phone

Rolling down the windows

Putting things in and out of cups

FOOD!

And then there were the necessary and appreciated rest stops.

We stopped on Thursday outside of Sacramento and slept in a great little Best Western Hotel. It was so nice! There was a restaurant right on the other side of the hotel so once we got settled we went and got some yummy home cookin' sort of dinner. After dinner we hit up the hotel pool! Nolan was super happy to be playing in the pool. At about 8pm we put Nolan down to bed and set up the baby monitors. Then, we hit up the hot tub! It was right outside our hotel door so it was a perfect set up. It was so completely relaxing. The hot tub was huge and fit around 12 people but Blaine and I had it all to ourselves. It was so nice to get to spend a few minutes with just the two of us!

This was Nolan ready to drive us away. The funniest part about this picture is his diaper! We ran out the night before so this is his night time diaper well into the morning. We headed straight to Target! :)

The next morning we woke up and headed towards Newhall, CA. While were driving along the I-5 we recognized that there wasn't anything that would provide for much nourishment. So around lunchtime we got off the freeway and headed east towards a small town named Mendota...little did we know this would be more then a lunch break. As we were driving around we heard a really awful sound coming from our right rear tire. After we went to a park and our Subway sandwiches were thought it might be necessary to take a better look at the sound. Blaine scooted under the car and could see our ball barings....not a good sign! We headed straight to a mechanic!

Here's the "the Lord was taking care of us" realization we had...

If we had kept driving in our car with it like that the tire would have locked up and we would have spun out of control...very scary thought.

If we hadn't gotten off the coastal drive we probably would have been stranded in a very remote are.

If we hadn't headed into Mendota for lunch we would have been stranded on the I-5.

Heavenly Father was definitely guiding us along.

The mechanic took a look at our car and tried to find the part that we needed. Well, due to the rarity of our car the part wouldn't be able to be brought to Mendota until Monday morning...this was Friday! So, Blaine's incredibly kind father drove the part up from LA (a 3 hr. drive) Saturday morning so we would only be stranded there one night...so nice!

The mechanic had one of his employees drive us to a near by hotel. We walked into to town to find some place to eat and found a yummy taqueria. While there we met the nicest people! They had lived there for about 50 years and knew everything and most people. They drove us back to our hotel but not before giving us a tour of town and buying us the best ice cream in town. They also gave us their phone number so we could call them if we needed anything. They were more than nice!

Nolan was pooped from the day's events.

Saturday morning came and Larry (Blaine's dad) came to the rescue with the necessary part to have our car fixed. We got some lunch and then drove away from Mendota, CA with a brand new feeling car!

(this is the last picture we took on our trip...kind of funny!)

We were quite behind on our schedule so we didn't make it to the wedding we were supposed to go to where we were going to get to hang out with Jill, Nick and Nita :( That was sad BUT we were able to spend some time with Blaine's brothers Dave and Sterling and his wife Mihaela and Larry and Suzette.

FINALLY...on Sunday we made it home...whew!