Your getting warmer....no, no colder now...warmer again...

Well. After a long break I am back and I hope there will be a lot to come in the next few days. We have been out of town and a lot is going on in our lives right now that has prevented me from making it to the computer. Though I will be back tracking and posting about the rest of May a bit later right now I am going to briefly tell you about our trip.
Two friends of ours got married last weekend at Lake Tahoe and Jake had been asked to be one of the groomsmen. But the week before the wedding he was sent on business to Utah (note: we might be moving there, but that is another story) and he wasn't going to be back until the day we were supposed to leave for the wedding. We were going to fly. So I decided that I would drive up with the kids (my sister Angela flew down to drive with me THANKYOU!) and hang out with my family while Jake was in Utah. Then we could drive to Tahoe from there and then drive home. No biggie. Right?
We discovered that my two younger children are not good road trippers. Especially Kailey. She is not one of those babies that falls asleep while you are driving in the car. Neither is Jaxon. So the drive up was miserable and long because we had to stop frequently. I felt like the worst parent just letting them scream it out at times.
When we got to Utah we wished we had brought some warm clothing. I had stuck in a light jacket for each of us and only one pair of long pants for the kids at the last minute. But it was pretty cold and rainy in Utah and we weren't super prepared. Towards the end of the Utah stay our A/C went out. FOR THE FOURTH TIME!!!!!
So as we headed out on our drive across Nevada all the windows were down and we were sweating, but we survived.
We got to Tahoe and did many fun things there (pics and details to come later), but were again found wishing for warmer attire. It was cold! We went there expecting to get to play on the beach of the lake, but that water was about 50 degrees and we didn't see anyone playing in it. We went out on a boat on the lake and were wrapped up in blankets to try to keep warm. We ended up heading in early because we were too cold to have fun.
After that fun and chilly weekend we left sunday night right after the wedding for home. That night our headlights both went out. We had to drive all night with the brights on and we really ticked a lot of people off. It so happened that because we left at night we ended up in the death valley area of CA at around 1:00pm with no A/C. Our car thermostat said it was 115 degrees outside!!!! Our poor children were soaked with sweat and having the windows down just made it feel like we had put the heater on full blast. We did some redneck air conditioning by filling our little cooler with ice water and soaked wash cloths in the water and laying them on ourselves to cool off. We just did that and made sure we were all drinking lots of water all day. We ended up driving through the hottest, dryest part of the country during the hottest, dryest part of the day, during the hottest, dryest part of the year without A/C. Not fun. I don't recommend it at all.
We all made it home in one piece and are now contemplating getting a new van instead of paying to get the A/C fixed because we have an inkling it will go out again, probably in the middle of a trip again. Not fun. Sorry to share the complaining parts first. We really did have some fun times on our trip and I will be sharing those in the near future. But we have definately decided that road trips are out of the question until our kids can handle it better and our car is more reliable.