Road trip to Lousiana...and a blow out and a tornado...all in 24 hours!

Yup, you read that right. The Rodgers clan took a "quick little road trip" down to our friends house in South Louisiana last weekend. Problem was, it wasn't quick. We left our house at midnight Friday night, planning to be at Danny & Abby's when they woke up the next morning. We got on the road right on time, and things were going great...until we stopped for gas at the halfway point. Scott checked our dog trailer and discovered a bearing (Spelling? Sorry, I'm a Chic!) had gone out. And it was 3:30 in the morning with not a store open! We were STUCK. It was literally so bad it wobbled when we drove. So we limped it along to a auto store parking lot and waited. We had both fallen asleep (Kids too, but they had been asleep the entire trip) when we heard this awful racket. We woke up to find a crack-addict knocking on the window asking Scott to roll the window down "to shake her hand". HA Yeah right lady. He politely says no and she proceeds to tell him she needs some money for "gas" because her 3 month old baby just got out of the hospital (yeah, most hospitals release 3-month old babies at 4am to people missing all of their teeth). Scott again politely says no, he doesn't have any cash and that we're broke down and she replies "That's fine, just gimme yo' Credit card, I Be right back wit it" By now the Mister nice guy act has wore off and he is PISSED! He kindly (rudely, loudly) tells her to leave and that she's not getting ANY thing from us. I guess by the tone in his voice she realized this crazy guy might just have a gun in the car so she left. RANDOM!!!!
So finally the sun rises and we wake up from our nap. We call around and cannot find the part we need to the tire. Luckily someone suggests NAPA & tells us it's just around the corner. Good thing because as we pulled in the parking lot the tire just about fell off. Scott walks in and walks right over to the part we need. FINALLY something on this trip will go good! Ummm, yeah. Remember how I mentioned a tornado in my title? All of a sudden as Scott is changing the tire, we hear fire truck sirens. They sound close, but we can't see them. Gunner is screaming "Fire truck! Fire truck!" (Fire trucks are his favorite) but we can't find one. Scott comes up to the car and says "Wonder if that's a tornado siren?" And just as he said it we hear "Imminent Weather Approaching. Take cover immidiately" over the siren's loudspeakers. The sky turned dark and then got a creepy orange glow to it and i almost lost it! Luckily, it passed us by and we didn't fly through the air like The Wizard of Oz, but it was scary just the same. After waiting out rain that fell so hard we couldn't see and wind that blew so hard the suburban shook, the storm finally passed and Scott was able to get back outside to try to fix the tire.
Okay, back to the trip. At about 11am we were finally fixed and back on the road. To make a long story a little shorter, we finally arrived at our friends house about 12 hours LATER than planned. Scott got to go out 'crawfishing' with Danny while the kids and I stayed and hung out with Abby. Check out this dinner she "threw" together for us. She had no idea we would be there for dinner, yet happened to have all of this lying around. I love true southern ladies! She made fresh fried shrimp, fresh frog legs and fried chicken (chicken was for me...how sweet!) and all of the fixins. SO nice of them to have us over. The kids LOVE Abby. She was so wonderful with them. She let them help make frog legs and even do dishes. After dinner they even sent us home with two sacks of Crawfish and everything to go along with it for a Crawfish boil. They are just SUCH nice people. We only wish we lived a little closer!
We had such a great time....even if we did have a wacky start to the trip. That's what memories are made of, and we certainly won't forget this trip anytime soon!