Call It What You Want...

This morning our MOPS group went to the Noblesville Airport (a grassy strip on Promise Road just NORTH of 146th Street) for a field trip. What a trip it turned out to be!

The kids got to get up into two different little planes (sorry to not know one plane from another, for those of you who might care). Adam grilled the teenage guy who was helping them in one with a never-ending series of "What's this?"es. I got a little on video. He did NOT turn the plane on, though one of the other children in our group did make it do something...

We got to ride around the property on a wagon pulled by an old Farm-All tractor.

We got to throw balls and draw with sidewalk chalk.

Then Carrie (who organized the outing) was going to get a ride in a real World War II biplane... except that Brendan was complaining and Drew wouldn't let go of her neck. And she said, "Does some other adult want to go?" And before I stopped to have the sense to THINK (and therefore talk myself out of it), I was climbing into the front seat of a real 1941 biplane!!!!

Seriously.

And I didn't just sit in the front seat. I put on the headset and the guy who owns the place (and the plane) started going and we flew all around! (In the above picture, there's a plane in the background that's just like the one I was in.) We flew over by Conner Prairie (not too close, friends, since the balloon was flying today, too) and I waved at Mel down in the Animal Encounters barn (she did not know that airplane overhead was me) and I took crummy pictures out the side to prove that I actually did it! the boys LOVE Carrie and didn't mind that they were waiting for me on the ground since they were with her.

Okay, so it was jiggly up there, and I had no idea how the camera was focusing, but yes, that yellow blob in the center of the picture is the Conner Prairie balloon, and that brown space is the "prairie" for which Conner Prairie is named...

How's that for a crazy turn of events today???

File this one under "Glad this didn't happen yesterday"

We took off for the library this morning. As we were leaving the neighborhood (the van seeming to drive a little roughly), it bucked a little and the "check engine" indicator light came on. I decided to go back home and call Tim to ask what I should do.

On the way home, I started feeling a little short of breath. So I put down the windows, and off we went (instead of the library) to the dealership. The boys complained they were cold, so I passed them blankets to cover with as all the windows were open (including the rear vent windows).

At the dealership, the boys played in the playroom for a while, checked out the vehicles on the showroom floor, wandered about...

The verdict? The Exhaust Gas Valve was stuck open.

I really did feel short of breath! It wasn't just me getting worried about the car! And I was not crazy making my babies freeze as we drove across town!

Sure, guys, you go ahead and fix that... but is there any chance we could spend the next hour at the library instead of here?
Sure, we'll have our shuttle take you over there...

So the man who drives the shuttle took us to the library (just up the road) and then picked us up when the car was finished. Just before the phone rang with the guy calling me to tell me they were coming after me, Mark started to whine about being hungry. (I was hungry too!) So $315 later (of course this isn't under the warranty; you're in bankruptcy), and with the car even washed, we went to Wendy's, had some lunch, and are back home.

Yesterday was a horrible day. The boys were rotten, it was raining, and I was overtired.

Today? Today I can take the car breaking and the change in plans in stride.

I'm glad this didn't happen yesterday.