Driving home

First off the pictures are in the wrong order and with my lack of blogging skills I don't know how to move them.

This was our trip home that turned out to be a 11 hour trip instead of the 6 hours that we had hoped for.

We were just 30 miles away from my parents house and we looking at the sky and all of the wind turbines, I was about to grab the camera because with the fog and they snow it looked really cool up on the hill. Then we heard the loudest bang.....I looked at the back tire and told Craig it was flat. When we stopped it was more then flat it was shredded. I've always thought when I've seen those tire pieces on the side of the road it had to have come from one of those big rigs. I guess I was wrong it can happen to any tire. At this point we had to partly unload the back of the car to get to the jack, we had our own stuff for the 5 of use plus we were taking my 2 nephews and a niece with us and extra's that my parents sent with us to take home. We found the jack only to realize it wouldn't fit under the car because it was so low with the tire shredded. Things went from bad to worse when we realize the part that lowers our spare tire was missing. We finally got someone to stop with a Chevy model only have his part to lower the tire was broken. I called my dad thank goodness he was home. He gathered his tools and headed out.

In the mean time about it was cold only about 20 degress and I had 5 kids that couldn't sit in the car. They just had to wait it out with the rest of us. After about 2 hours my dad arrived along with the state patrol. While waiting Craig had been trying to get the lug nuts off and only 4 of the six would come off. When the state patrolman showed up his first response was "You are going to have to get this rig towed, it can't be blocking my highway" I knew if it came to that would we not be going home till the next day. Craig convinced him to let us try and then even flagged someone down with the right part to get to our spare tire. The man also only lived 2 miles down the road and when we couldn't get the 2 other lug nuts off he went and got a blow torch. Even with the torch on nut refused to budge and they had to melt off the entire screw.

After a very cold 4 hours they got the spare on...thanks to my dad for bringing a portable compressor and filling up the tire we were on our way. We made it safely home although we still had a problem with our lights on our trailer but it was a easier and quicker fix. Lesson learned make sure you have all parts to fixing a flat tire before a long trip and I think I'm going to have a emergency kit in my car!