Summer Travel Journal Part 1: Discovery Gateway and Olympic Plaza

Welcome to our Summer Travel Journal. 
It will be long. 
But, it will be flooded with pictures. 

Let's get started, shall we?

After our 25 hour drive west, we arrived at Dr. C's parent's house.

As we were getting out of the van, Fearless and I had this conversation:
Fearless: Mommy, we have a really crummy car.
Me: (surprised) Really?  Why?
Fearless: (innocently) Because there are a lot of crumbs in it.
True dat.

To take a break from our crummy car, we took the train down to Salt Lake City to visit Discovery Gateway.

Miss B's first train ride!

For those of you who have not yet visited Discovery Gateway, you are missing out.  It's a pretty fun children's museum.  My kids had a blast.

 And, as an added bonus, I saw another cute little girl with Ds playing there too.  I love seeing other kids with Down syndrome...warms my heart every time.

We also had to make a stop at the splash pad in the Olympic Plaza.

 This is also where I realized just how much I have acclimated to The South.  It was a bright, sunny, 93 degree day with very little humidity.When I used to live in Utah, I would have complained about how miserably hot it was.  This time, it felt quite pleasant.

Fearless with his cousin...these two were like peas in a pod.

Hello. Goodbye.

It finally happened.  Our 1995 Ford Escort that Dr. C bought before we were married, died. 

It's last act of service was filling in for the van which had been stuck in the service department at the dealership for a couple of days.  The little red car carted us all around like a champ.  When the van was ready, we drove the the 35min. drive to pick it up.  As we got closer to the dealership, little red hiccuped, but kept going until we pulled into the parking lot.  I got all the car seats switched back over to the van, ready to head home.  Dr. C tried to take off in the little red car; it went about 10 feet and then...it completely died.  Never to be driven again. 

It was so thoughtful of "The Little Red Car" to wait to take its final guzzle of gas after we had our main car back; it full filled its mission of hauling us around and being our backup car right to the end.

Poor thing!

I think it was taking notes from Silverstein's "The Giving Tree", except without the apples.



The kiddos had to play in it one more time before it was taken to it's final resting place.

And now, after a month of being a one-car family... 

We're over it.

And there's a new kid on the block.

Dr. C has always wanted a truck, so when he asked one of his co-workers if she would sell her not-for-sale truck to him and she surprisingly said yes...we bought it.

And now we are the proud owners of a truck.

 

Or at least Dr. C is.

 

I am not really a truck-girl myself, so I feel like a bit of a poser driving it.  But it makes Dr. C happy and the price was fabulously affordable, so I guess that makes me a truck girl despite my personal feelings about it. 

P.S.  There is something about guys and their trucks...I don't think I've ever seen Dr. C so excited about purchasing something!  I pretty sure that means having a truck is going to become a permanent thing.