Family Picture Fiasco

       I have been bugging Paul for the longest time to take family pictures and even though we don't have kids yet, I thought it would be fun to take some pictures of our cute little family. Paul hasn't been too thrilled about the idea of pictures, but several weeks ago we were shopping for clothes and Paul found the perfect shirt to wear for pictures. I was kind of excited because after that I knew he was on board!
      I asked Paul's amazing cousin Nicole to take our pictures, and we set a date. As over done as it is, I really wanted to take pictures up the canyon with the changing fall leaves; and even though it snowed up the canyon the night before, I was still determined to get those fall pictures taken.
      Paul had never been up Cedar Canyon to the place where I wanted to take pictures, so we drove around a little bit looking for places where we wanted to take pictures. We kept driving up and up and up until we had pretty much gotten to the top of the canyon and started going down the other side. (Might I add in that whilst we were driving up and up and up we splashed through at least three ginormous puddles that repainted the truck brown!) Anyway, at that point we decided it would be a good idea to turn around and go back to the picture sites that we thought were really good. We flipped a U turn and started going up so we could go back down the canyon. We were started up a semi flat hill when the truck just slowly died. Power was still on, the radio was running, but the engine turned off for some reason! Of course I was dressed in super cute clothes, and shoes that couldn't really get muddy, and of course the truck happened to die right in the middle of a huge puddle of dirt and snow; so naturally Paul got to get out and look under the hood to see what the problem was. Nicole and I tried to make the best of the situation by taking some silly pictures.

     While he was checking things out, I was frantically trying to get service on my phone. When Paul got back into the truck with no news, I was trying not to psych myself out. We were in the middle of no where, no cell service, no clue what was wrong, and no clue as to when the next person would drive along. We couldn't think of anything else to do but pray. After our prayer we tried to start the car. It didn't start. We tried to push the truck enough to get to a down hill so we could coast, and that didn't really work either. So we sat and waited, hoping and praying that some kind soul would drive along and want to tow us.
     About fifteen minutes later our prayers were answered! Someone came driving down the road. We flagged them down and asked so nicely if they would tow us down the mountain. Paul and the boy
from the other car hooked up the tow straps and we started off. After five minutes of us being towed, Paul attempted to start the truck and... it started! We waved our saviors down and told them that the truck started and had been running for a good 5 minutes or so, so we told them they didn't have to take us all the way back down the mountain. After we unhooked the tow straps and waved our goodbyes, we continued down the mountain as well. Since we hadn't taken our family pictures yet we decided we might as well do it since we were up there already.
       Paul pulled the truck off to the side of the road at a cute spot and turned her off. We took some really great pictures and then loaded back into the truck to move on to the next picture spot. When Paul tried to start the truck it wouldn't start... AGAIN! As you can guess we felt like idiots for not towing the truck all the way down when we had the chance. We were on a pretty good sized hill so we gave the truck a little push and coasted down the mountain.

      We still had a few spots that we wanted to take pictures at, so we coasted to them, made sure the truck was sitting at the top of a down hill, and got out to take pictures. Nicole Golden did a fabulous job  with our pictures. They all turned out really great. Anyway, after we had taken all the pictures we wanted to up the canyon, we prepared ourselves for the adventure we would have as we tried to get back down the canyon. The road was steep enough that we were able to start coasting down without pushing the truck at all. We actually sped up to at least 30mph, the problem with that was, the brakes were really tight and the steering wheel was tight as well so we couldn't turn or slow down very well. We hit a flat spot where there were cows in the road. We couldn't slow down or we could get stuck on the flat spot. We prayed that the cows would stay put and also that no cars would be coming the opposite direction of us so we could drive on the wrong side of the road to get around the cows. We successfully passed them and continued down the mountain. Pretty sure we may have hit a bird in the process though, because it seriously flew right in front of the truck!
     When we got to the section of the road that T-bones we were hoping that there wouldn't be any traffic coming so we could coast right through a stop sign and not lose momentum. When we got to the split, there were at least 6 cars coming in either direction. We stopped the truck and waited for traffic to clear. Since we stopped on a flat spot, the truck wasn't going to move anywhere without help. Nicole and I jumped out of the truck and started pushing from behind. When we had achieved a pretty decent speed we jumped in the back of the truck so we could keep up the trucks speed.
       Clearly I wasn't thinking about the weather when I jumped out of the truck to push, because I left my coat in the car. While we were coasting down the last half of the canyon I was freezing in the back of the truck! When we got closer to the bottom, a cop pulled up behind us and started following us. Nicole and I flipped out a little bit because we weren't sure if we were going to get in trouble for sitting in the back of a pickup while driving down a highway. We pulled into the canyon park parking lot and the cop just kept on driving. *phewf* dodged that bullet!
       When we started driving up the canyon this morning we had no idea what sort of an adventure we were going to have. Can't say that having a car break down is an adventure I would want to have again, but it sure was something that I won't forget!

Here are some of the amazingly cute pictures that Nicole Golden took for us!