Chi-Omega Mom's Weekend

On Friday, right after Danny left for the retreat, I headed down to Bloomington for Chi-Omega's Mom's weekend. Although the traffic was heavy heading south on a Friday evening, the ice shining in the trees was beautiful! I got to the house about 6:00 and visited with Emily and Erin (Lenny) until we left for dinner.

Emily's pledge class made arrangements to have dinner at the Colorado Steakhouse and we sat at a table with Cara and her mom (from Carmel), and Erin and her mom and sister (from Little Rock Arkansas). It is always good to be with Emily and her friends and it was good to catch up with some of the other moms as well.

After dinner we drove back to the house for Emily to pick up a few things and headed back to Fishers. We got home about 11 and went to bed soon after. Lady was so excited that Emily was home :)

Saturday morning Heidi and I walked for a couple of hours in the snow - slow going! We got another 4" of snow by the time it tapered off. Emily slept in and finally got up about 11. At 1:15, Laurie picked us up, we stopped by to pick up Debbie and then looked at 11 houses for sale. At the 10th one, the driveway and sidewalk had not been touched since before the first snow and there were drifts a few feet high. Emily volunteered to wade through and look in the windows - the snow was more than half way up her body! After she made footprints that we could all step into, we followed her to the door. It's funny, because this is the one house that I think we will make an offer on :)

After Laurie dropped us off at home, Emily, Debbie and I discussed all the houses, had coffee and a fresh loaf of bread and visited for a while. I drove Debbie home and stopped by Blockbuster to rent "Little Miss Sunshine" and then by Kroger to pick up a cake mix - Emily had been talking about chocolate cake since the day before. I bought a mix by Betty Crocker called "Triple Chocolate Hot Fudge Cake" and made it when I got home. We really liked the movie and Emily was in chocolate heaven when I set the whole cake pan in front of her :)

On Sunday morning we got up and left the house about 9:15. The plan was to attend the 11:00 service at the church that Emily and Grant attend - Sherwood Oaks Christian Church. While we were on 465 a light started flashing on the dashboard and at County Line Road we pulled off to a Shell station to investigate. Turns out the light is related to the transmission and it was a good thing we were in a parking lot as the car would go no further. Hmmm, what to do? We called AAA and the recorded greeting mentioned long delays. I finally talked to a dispatcher and arranged for a tow, but they could not give ANY estimate of how long it might take - not even if it would be the same day. Because of the long delays, they were authorizing private service, but you had to find a private contractor, pay them, and then arrange for remibursement. I left my info with AAA and we pondered what to do next - then we remembered that we had the rest of the chocolate cake - we found a plastic spoon and fork and we both dug in! We laughed at the situation for quite a while.

Emily called Erin to see what her schedule was and she said she would be happy to come and get both of us and drive me back to Fishers. I started the car to warm us up and slipped it into gear - it would go for a few feet but then just stop. I called a towing company - HIX - and arranged for them to tow my car. At first they said it would be a couple of hours and that was fine (we had the cake!). Erin headed up 37 but the tow truck showed up in about 10 minutes. I was able to ride back to Fishers with the driver but Lenny wasn't there yet. Emily gathered up her stuff and we walked over to the gas station. A clerk named Linda was working and we explained the situation and Emily waited inside with her - I looked out and my car was loaded onto the truck so I left with the driver. Emily and I both made new friends - the tow truck driver races stock cars on the weekends at the Speedrome and Linda and Emily are BFF! We dropped my car at Don Hinds and he was kind enough to take me a little further on down the road and dropped me at home.


Not quite the typical Mom's Weekend! I'm grateful that we both made it home safely and fingers crossed that I don't need a brand new transmission. . . .