That time I thought my van broke down...

Tuesday afternoon Ethan had baseball practice. No big deal. We got there and he took off to the field with his coach and team mates. I sat in the van with sleeping Elijah, hungry Melia and impossible-to-contain in an open area Ezra. A friend from church came over to chat and we talked a bit while Ezra bounced all around the inside of the van.

At 6.30, I went to the field and got Ethan since we needed to leave to go to church. We all got back to the van to load up, and I went to crank the van. There was a problem. The van wouldn't crank. I tried again. And again. And again. No luck. But then I couldn't take the key out of the ignition. I had to idea how to fix the thing!

I looked around and found one of Ronnie's friends. I had him come over and see what he could do. He found that the battery posts were corroded so he tried cleaning them off and then hooked up jumper cables to jump the van off. No luck. He cleaned some more and we tried again. No luck again. My friend from church came over with her drink and we poured it on the battery. Once again we tried to crank it, but had no luck. At this point Ronnie's friend got another vehicle brought over and we tried to crank the van with two vehicles' batteries. No luck.

In my head I'm calculating how much this could possibly cost me with towing and a mechanic, plus finding a rental we could all fit in. I'm wondering how in the world we'll be able to afford the repairs and trying to keep from crying.

By now, there were several people around. All of them were trying to figure out why in the world my van wouldn't start. It just didn't make sense. The friend from church tried to crank it one more time. And when she did, she asked why the van was in "neutral" rather than "park." No one knew, but she shifted it into "park," and tried once more to crank it. Lo and behold, it started! The only problem was that it had been in the wrong