A Very Long Day

The trip home was quite an ordeal. We started out running a little late. Then we had to swing by Willow Run to fill out an application. We left just after lunch, but a little over an hour outside of Denver we had a mishap.

We locked the keys in the car at a gas station. It was still running. I had jumped out one side with Kevin to run Gloria to the bathroom, just as Danya was yelling for Daniel to kill a spider on her window. He jumped out and ran around to the other side of the van to kill the spider. It got stuck inside the window, so he tried to roll down the window, but accidentally hit the door lock instead. He didn't get the spider, but he did shut the door. That's when he realized that the keys were inside and all the doors were locked. So we sat in a tiny gas station in the little town of Deer Trail, Colorado for hours while we tried to get a locksmith out to help us. They were all an hour and a half away and wanted to charge about $130 to come rescue us. We finally reached someone in the next town over who would do it for $85.

That night we tried to stop for the night and find a hotel around 10pm. Every hotel in every town from Hays, Kansas all the way to Salina was completely booked. We followed several people from hotel to hotel, until we started to recognize them. There were hand written signs taped to some hotel lobby doors saying, "No Vacancy!" We finally found a hotel in Salina where someone hadn't shown up to claim a room they reserved. Since it was after midnight, they rented it to us. I've never been so glad to see a day end.

The next day we stopped in Wichita to have lunch at Chuck E. Cheese with Christina and her children. That was a much needed highlight to the trip home. Then we dropped the girls off at their grandparents' house. We decided to leave them there so our house would be easier to keep clean for a few days while people came to see it. That worked out well, since three different realtors came to view the house.