So, we flew to Albuquerque, and then drove into Roswell, NM this last week for Thanksgiving. We had a week full of turkey, birthday parties, and photo shoots. It was chaotic. I do well with chaos... Fraser does not. So when we finally said all of our good byes on Sunday morning and got out of town by 7:15am instead of the 7:00am that was originally planned, Fraser was already out of sorts.
He apparently assessed the gas situation and determined that we would drive to Vaughn, NM before getting gas. Given the state of the already chaotic morning, and my husband's mood, I decided not to press the issue of gas. I knew that the hour and a half stretch between Roswell and Vaughn could easily be made on a half tank of gas. Well, we had a rental car and we weren't familiar with its level of gas indicator as it was digital. Not the old "needle-points-to-the-amount-of-gas type." As we got about 40 miles into our trip Fraser began to panic. He noticed that the digital bars that showed our gas level were dropping dramatically fast. We were fighting against wind and snow, and a stupid digital gas level indicator. Life got bad. Real bad. Real quick.
You see, between Roswell and Vaughn there is . That's not a typo. There is nothing!! Not a gas station. Not cell phone service. Not a tumble weed.... okay, there are a lot of tumble weeds, but no tumble weeds carrying gas cans. So, I frantically dialed my parents every five seconds praying for even one bar of service to get their phone to ring. I knew that if I could just get them to answer and say "GAS!!" then they'd know there was a problem and they would head my way. They always do.
By God's good graces, I got one phone call through. One broken phone call. Then another ten miles down the road I got another phone call. And that was it. We were stuck. Stuck in a snow storm, on the side of the road, out of gas, WITH A TODDLER!! If it wasn't for the blessing I received from getting a phone call into my parents -- I would have thought that I was in hell.
As I sat there putting together puzzles over and over again with my Hudson I listened to Fraser complain about everything he could think of to complain about, and hear every excuse as to why he didn't get gas. He probably would have believed me if I told him that there are gas sucking aliens in the pastures. Anything to blame something or someone else for the empty tank. Then I really annoyed him (yes, even further). I asked him to name me some of the things that he's really thankful for in life -- it was Thanksgiving weekend after all.
So once I started him off by pointing out the biggest blessing of all (the one who was sitting in his lap). We really started to come up with a fantastic list of wonderful things we have to love and enjoy in our lives. Our list of blessing outweighed our moments of complaining by far!!
At that moment one of the things that topped our list of blessings was that we have fantastic parents. Parents that will drop anything to drive 60 miles (each way) on a Sunday just to bring their children 5 gallons of gas. We have the type of parents who will fly to Las Vegas just to babysit when things get too busy. And we have the type of parents who love our son more than any set of grandparents possibly could. Both my parents and Fraser's parents are huge blessings in our lives. I'm not sure what we would do without them. I know that I'd probably still be stuck on the side of the road counting tumble weeds.
Here's a quick look at one of the perks of this gig -- cute babies during my Thanksgiving holiday!! I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to meet little Christopher, his big brother Brandon, his grandma, and to get re-acquainted with an old high school friend (his mom).
Enjoy :o)
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