Ward Campout

August 14, 2009

No, we didn't camp out. We're not that cruel. We wanted the people in our ward to still like us, and they definitely wouldn't have after listening to Seth not sleep all night.

But we did go up to roast some hot dogs and mooch some smores off of Lenae. I was a bit worried when we got to the (very) "rustic" campsite and saw that it was basically overgrown with poison ivy. But Seth was very good and stayed put--mostly because he's not tall enough to get out of his camping chair. I did slap some socks on him to prevent bites and rashes, which made him look like an adorable German boy.
It was approaching 8pm, which meant bedtime for Seth. We hopped into the car, Jon turned the key, and...click, click, click. Nothing. Our first guess was the battery had died. But then the headlights worked, so that didn't make sense. Casey Uhlig tried jumping it, then tried lots of other things (none of which worked). So at 10:30pm, we hitched a ride home with sweet Bente. And no, Seth didn't sleep a wink on the 40 minute drive home.

The next morning (after a 5:30 am run to the airport to drop of the Atkinsons), Jon drove up to the campsite to direct the towtruck. $150 later, the car was at the shop. Unfortunately, they didn't open until Monday. Which meant I was totally carless, since Jon was leaving for his class Sunday night. Marley was so sweet and let us borrow Carlos' car for a few days (which was a very good thing, otherwise the Atkinson's cat would have starved to death since I was supposed to be feeding her).

Turns out it was the battery. Jon was very unhappy--we could have saved a couple hundred dollars by just fixing it ourselves. Lesson learned: always test the battery before you assume it's something else.