California Trip Day Seven – Surprise #2

Life lesson: If the service engine soon light comes on in your car, the first thing you should do is check to make sure the gas cap is screwed on tightly. It took a lot of phone calls to auto part stores and mechanic uncles, and a visit to a local repair shop (with the nicest owner known to man) to figure that out. The ironic part is that when the light first came on we pulled out the owner’s manual to see what it said. It said that the light may come on if the gas cap is not secured properly, but both Nate and I said, “it couldn’t be that; it’s too simple” (and we had last put gas in three days before the light even came on, so there was no obvious association between them). Neither of us actually spent the ten seconds it would have taken to check it and rule it out as a possibility. We are idiots sometimes. We had a good laugh about it. I laughed even more when I saw that it is printed right on the gas cap. I told the kids that whenever mom or dad do something dumb, they could say “gas cap.”

Nate got the gas cap fiasco straightened out before breakfast. Then he took the kids swimming while I packed and did a couple of loads of laundry. We checked out at noon, and then drove to Anaheim. We just told the kids that we were leaving the hotel, but they assumed that we were headed home. When we drove past Disneyland they were interested in all the signs, but they still didn’t get it. We had to explain to them that we weren’t actually going home yet and that we would be going to Disneyland tomorrow. Once they believed us, they were all very excited and happy that the vacation wasn’t over yet.

I love that I got a sweet deal on our hotel and I love how roomy it is. They called our hotel room in San Diego a kids’ suite. It was really just one room with French doors in the middle to make it into two rooms. Plus we had to walk through the kids’ room to get to the bathroom. This place is loads bigger. It has two queen beds in the main room and then bunk beds in the other room. There is lots more floor space and (the best part) there are two bathrooms. It will be nice to have a bit more space this week.