Saturday the 23rd

Ok, so we made it to Madison around 10:30 AM. We knew we had time to kill, so we emptied the car then went grocery shopping. While we were finishing at the store, the phone rings....

One of the tires on the trailer totally blew out!! Thank God everyone was ok and Ken was able to get the truck to the side of the road. That's why we wanted him to drive! But then the shoulder was really narrow, they couldn't jack the trailer up high enough, 911 left them on hold, and the tow truck never came! 2 1/2 hours later, they were back on the road. Unfortunately, the spare was almost flat too, so Ken had a hard time controlling the trailer until they could find a gas station. From what they tell me, it almost jack-knived at one point, and came close to pushing them over the embankment, which would have flipped them, but Ken kept control and kept everyone safe.

So anyway, we know at this point that we have a lot of time to kill, so we bake veggie burgers for lunch, then all take naps. Only, John was the only one who could actually sleep. We had internet already, and we all had our laptops, so we fooled around. Then we woke John up and went on a driving tour of Madison. After that, we were planning to go on a hike. 10 steps into the woods, and I already had 2 mosquito bites, so I decided to walk home. The guys went on the hike, and Judson fell into the lake!

But bigger than Judd's wet sneaker was the fact that when I got home, the oven was still hot! Yes, I had turned it off, but apparently it was broken. Ryan tried to play with the knob to get it off, and all of a sudden there was a bright red flash behind it, and sparks came out the bottom! It was smoking a lot too!!! Thank goodness the breaker switches are located in the kitchen, so I was able to throw the switch right away. Maintenance said we'd have to wait until Monday to get it fixed!

Around 7, the truck arrived! Yaaay, everyone made it! While we were unloading, we had to separate what needed to go in storage, so that stuff stayed on the front lawn. A. Donna and Mom started putting away kitchen stuff. When the truck was mostly empty, Ryan started rebuilding the futon (without instructions) and I started working on the bunk beds. Only, I wasted an hour trying to find the hardware! It turns out, it was in a box that was labeled... "girls' room: bunk bed hardware" and it was in the room, but turned backwards the whole time!

After it got dark, it came down to a big scramble to get everything inside for the night. Only, we forgot to leave enough room for the air mattress! So then we had to rearrange all the boxes to make room for Judd and I to sleep! We were on the air bed, John and Ryan were on the futon, Mom and the girls were on the bunk beds, and A. Donna and U. Ken were in our bed. Finally...Goodnight!