Warranties

Yesterday we were driving to CJ's soccer tournament in Tallahassee, FL, when our van broke down. Again. In the same way.
We were driving through Thomasville when it started "clunking" and the gears started slipping, so Casey pulled over. Once we stopped, it refused to go back into gear. So our wonderful friend Paul, the manager of Firestone, went to our house and got the 15-passenger van and came and got us, along with a tow truck. What a GREAT friend. The other cool thing is the transmission is under warranty, since they just rebuilt it, so, "Yay!"
While we waited for our ride, we called CJ's assistant coach, to see if he'd swing by on his way to the games. That worked out well, and CJ wasn't even late to the first game. (We, on the other hand, didn't arrive in Tallahassee until the end of it.)
While we waited in Thomasville, we walked to the Farmer's Market the was across the street from our unfortunate pit-stop.
My smallest children are OBSESSED with pumpkins. They were in heaven. The Market had all shapes, sizes, and colors. They even had some apple gourds, which look their mama was a watermelon and their daddy was a pumpkin. Cole and I talked about the tiny gourds that looked like 'God painted half green and yellow and half orange and yellow'. Awesome. They had beautiful dark purple eggplants piled up next to red, yellow, and green peppers. And I had left my camera in the van....auughhh.
And it was such a pretty day. It was a perfect day to be broke-down and walking.
And we got to see CJ's second game, where they still lost, but CJ got a goal, and the score wasn't nearly as bad (with the first one, his team never scored, and when I asked how many goals the other team got, he said, "I lost count").
Cole played on this really cool tree we sat under to watch the game. One of the dads said, "You know all those kids are going to have poison ivy rashes from playing around that tree". So I said, "That's ok, we'll bring them to you to get fixed up!" (He just happens to be my kids' pediatrician. Besides, his son was running all over the place barefoot, so I wasn't worried.)
Casey had a stroke of brilliance and had brought Maddy some 'night-night milk' (what my kids call the cup of milk I give them at bed-time) in the cooler, which was awesome because she didn't seem to be feeling really great and probably would've screamed the whole way back home without that conditioned response of sleeping after her milk. Thank God for Pavlov's dog and Daddy's genius.
Oh! Hilarious thing Cole said after we moved all our stuff into the big van, watched our white van go off to the "doctor", and were finally on our way. Cole says in his 'grown-up' tone: "Ok, Dad, now don't break THIS one."