home sweet home

we made it home relatively unscathed! the most annoying things we encountered were being unable to sleep on the plane and JFK being unusually hot and dry-which made us very unhappy. the icing on that cake is that the water-fountain-water tasted dreadful and the bottled water was virtually unaffordable.

jesse met us at the airport and we headed over to see my sister and pick up some car keys...then downtown for some lunch...then up and down church street for fun...and he drove us down the parking lot with the car. luckily he didn't make it out of the parking lot before we discovered we couldn't get the car to start. after trying to jump start the car about eight times and calling my dad at least four times we broke down and called AAA for some help. then we sat in the car and waited for something like a half hour and then got a call from them saying it'd be another half hour before the town truck got there. jesse drove us into montpelier, where george's mom, susan, met us, we ran into my aunt susi and then susan brought us the rest of the way home.

before we left montpelier i got a call from the tow truck guy who told me that the car started fine-as long as it's in neutral instead of park. so he didn't tow it anywhere because it didn't need to be.

after finally getting home i rang the door bell and surprised my mom! she was very, very, very, very surprised and happy. i managed to keep the actually dates of our trip home a secret from her and let everyone else know. woo hoo! i started to tell her the story of the car and she interrupted with, "oh, ... and it has to be in neutral, dad knows that. halley knows that." ... .. i'm SO GLAD they let me figure this one out on my own.

jenna's managed to keep all the plants i left behind alive-except the avocado tree which may or may not make it because one of the four cats in the house used its pot as a litter box. excitingly, her chinchilla, chillbert, has learned to use her excersize wheel! and all the cats got fat!