Surprise Gone Wrong

So now that the surprise party is under way I can write about the crazy events that took over our day yesterday.

We had been planning for months to go to Chicago to surprise G G Storm for her 80th birthday. After working out leave and flights and money we had it under way. We decided to drive for the money aspect and were very set to be on our way yesterday. I spent two days cleaning the house and doing laundry, preparing the house to be empty for a week, including removing any perishable food and scrubbing bathrooms. We woke up yesterday morning, packed the car, got gas and where on our way. Two hours into the trip Shawn was updating his mother and I was driving when the car started to make a loud noise, it got louder and louder until we started to smell burning and the car began to slow down on it's own. We pulled over and got the car to a little off the high way body shop. They looked very closely at the car and discovered there was no oil!!!! It had all leaked out. Apparently with the cycle of storage and long drives we had pretty badly messed up the under parts of the car. This little shop wanted $800 to fix it!!!! Getting Johnny to GG for her surprise seemed to be further and further away. We were lucky enough to be only 40 mins from my brother's body shop (he is a service advisor at a Saturn dealer ship, this shows how insane his communit is) The little shop filled us with oil and we drove carefully to my brother, who helped us out a lot. He some how knocked the price down to $500 and lent us his own car to use for the next week while ours is being fixed....but....this all happened so quickly it seems. I called an airline that we use typically and they wanted $500-$700 to fly there.....We had little choice...there was no way we where going to make it to Chicago for G G.

This was out of our control, and everyone is very understanding, GG even cried with thanks (along with the shock of her surprise party going on around her in Chicago) that we even tried. But I can't help but feel horrible about the entire thing. It was a huge let down and disappointment all around. Thank goodness Johnny didn't understand he wasn't going to Grandmas like promised (though he wasn't very happy about the events as happened) That was our Friday...Shawn took en entire week of leave to sit at home...ahhhhhh....but this is being an adult I guess.