Spring

I remember one spring when we had 5 kids and we lived in North Highlands which is north of Sacramento. It was a rainy foggy early spring week and we wanted to get out of the fog. We planned a trip to the mountains above Placerville on Saturday. As anyone with children knows it took a lot of preparation to get ready. We were finally set to go about 10 in the morning. We had loaded all the food, coats, kids and parents in the old station wagon. After the usual arguments about who was going to sit where and who was touching who we took off. Everyone was excited for the mini vacation. We drove to the out skirts of town and the car just died. We pulled into a service station to see what the problem was. After sitting in the car for what seemed like hours as Larry checked everything he could think of we had to give up and call off the trip. I don't remember how we got the car home. (It was, after all, over 40 years ago) The rest of the day was spent with Larry trying to solve the mystery. He finally took off the gas tank and found that it was full of balloons! One of the kids had put water balloons in the gas tank! I won't mention the name of the child but I think it was a hard lesson to learn....no wonderful day in the mountains and everyone blaming you!