Well we just got back from a crazy but fun 24 hour trip to San Diego to see my little brother Ryan and his fiance Amanda get married on the beach.  Pictures of the ceremony are posted below! The ceremony was awesome, it was just a wonderful time for Ryan and Amanda and the family there.  We had a perfect day on the beach and a really great ceremony and we’re so happy for them. If the slideshow is messing up, just click refresh and that should fix it.

The wedding was monday night and monday morning Bri and I were basically not going to be able to come.  I had been sick the day before, and woke up not feeling so great monday, and certainly not good enough to drive 6 hours etc.  Bri had been a little under the weather too.  But at the last minute I changed my mind and decided to give it a go because heck, your brother only gets married once and I can be sick in a car as well as I can be sick at home I suppose.

So we headed out on our journey at about 8 AM monday morning after dropping little Toby off at “PetsHotel”.  I decided to take the truck, thinking to myself “the truck is less likely to blow a tire because Bri’s tires are older”

I was sadly mistaken.  About 100 miles or more after we left, Bri and I started hearing a curious and saddening sound.  Our back tire had blown…in the middle of no where (or so we figured).  I managed to pull over without any terrible crash.  Tire was shredded.  We would have grabbed a picture but we weren’t in a picture taking mood I suppose.  We both admitted we’re not photojournalistic enough to want to capture all of our hardships.  Hehe.

So the next step was to fix this tire.  I managed to get the spare off the underside, only to discover that we had no jack.  Apparently the first owner of the truck jacked the jack.  Or else we simply couldn’t find it.  Either way, we were now stuck at mile marker 72 with no jack and somehow no one seemed to want to pull over and help.  We took out our trusty iPhones and punched in a tire repair place…and AMAZINGLY there was a tire place only 2 miles from where we were!  Gave them a call and they came out in about a half hour, helped us put on the spare, and we drove back to their shop, which is a nice way of saying it.  It was much more of a tin shack in the middle of the Sahera.  They had a used tire they could put on for us, and we were back on the road.  Whole thing only cost $60.  We were praising God all the way out too because there was about 900 other places that would have been terrible to break down.  The guy said the next closest tire place after them was about 35 miles…and after that who knows.

After that we endured some crazy wild wind, and nearly ran out of gas but we made it!  The ceremony was great and I was really glad we were able to go.  Here are a few more pictures of the trip including a sign to “Dateland” which is where the tire place was.  We are now back safe and I’m in the midst of “prepping” for my procedure today…not so fun.