The rest of the story

So, Saturday we got up and played with the horses and got muddy and cold again:) Oh, but before we went outside that morning, Cole decided to walk off the end of a big marble step and cracked his head on the bottom step. His eye was pretty swollen and turned reddish purple. Good times. He now has a pretty nice black eye that Travis is diggin' because he says it makes him look tough. A tough 16 month old...uhhhh. Anyway, Sarah, Cole and I drove down to Chico and had lunch. Yes, the check engine light was still on:(
We stayed the night at Sarah's house in Gridley, had breakfast with my mom in the morning and went back to Sarah's, so Cole could take a nap. And as anti-climactic as it was, the check engine light turned off when we were driving back to Sarah's, but I was thrilled. I debated whether or not to put Cole down for a second nap because it would be cutting it a little close to us needing to leave for the airport. I decided to put him down anyway and just made sure that I would wake him by 2:30pm, so we could have some time to get there to drop off the rental car and catch the shuttle to the airport. He slept for an hour, I got him up, we said our goodbyes and we were on the road by 2:40pm. It had started raining that morning and the closer we got to Sacramento (where the airport is) it was coming down in sheets and there was some pretty thick fog. Despite the rain and fog, I made it to the car rental place in pretty good time and was dropping off my car by 3:45pm. Because it was raining so hard, I kept Cole in the car as long as I could. I unloaded the bags from the trunk and had to take Cole out of his carseat, so that I could attach the wheels to it. While I was doing that, Cole climbed into the front seat and was pretending to drive the car. I took his carseat out of the car and said, "ok buddy, let's go". I shut the back door and went to open the front door to get Cole out and I heard, beep beep. Yep, Cole locked the car!! In hindsight, I figured out that he pushed the lock button on the keys that were still hanging in the ignition (because the lady told me to leave them in). Before I shut the back door, I even looked to see that the car was unlocked and it WAS. Call it perfect, or terrible, timing but he locked the car right after I shut the back door. Needless to say, I started to freak. I actually kept my cool but my heart was seriously beating in my throat. I looked around and the lady who told me to leave the keys in the car sees me and asks, "Did you just lock your baby in the car??".
I reply, "NO! He locked himself in the car. Do you guys have a spare key?"
"No."
"Well, you need to help me because we have a plane to catch."
"How did you lock your baby in the car?"
"I didn't. Can you get someone to get him out??"
"I can try to find the mechanic."
"Do that now, please."
So, she walks away and this really nice lady comes out of the rental place and asks if he's alright. He is, of course, just fine:) In fact, he is honking the horn and turning the wheel making vroom vroom sounds. He's so stinkin' cute. Since I'm getting soaked by the second, I decide to see if I can get Cole to open the car. I knock on the window to get his attention and ask him to push the buttons to unlock the door. Amazingly, he starts to push various buttons (and if the car would have been turned on, he would have rolled down the window!) but unfortunately when he pushed on the lock button, he just kept locking it. I begged for him to push the other side but his understanding only went so far. Then I tried to get him to pull on the door handle to unlock it and again, amazingly, he pulled on the handle. But as hard as he could pull, it was just not enough to undo the lock. The same lady who yelled at me for locking him in the car came back after about 10 minutes with a Slim Jim to try and unlock the car. She had no idea how to use it and I offered to help because I've seen people use them before. But she said that if I hurt the car in any way, I would be held liable for the damages. So I had to watch her fumble and scrap the car up for a good 5 minutes before she gave up. After a few more minutes, the mechanic showed up. By this time, I am COMPLETELY soaked to the bone. There was not a single inch of me that wasn't wet. The mechanic pounded in a shim, inserted this metal thing between the door frame and the car and started to turn a knob that spread the top of the door open. He slid in a long metal wire, that Cole kept yanking on until I told him to stop (I think a part of him knew that it was important for him to listen to me and be good) and eventually the guy hook the lock and unlocked the door. I thanked him, yanked Cole out of the car, put him in his sopping wet car seat and we were off to the shuttle. I was running as fast as my legs could carry me, Cole, and three peices of luggage and as soon as I rounded the corner of the rental building I saw the shuttle sitting there. I ran down the sidewalk praying that the driver saw me and that he would wait. But dontcha know, he closed the doors and pulled away when I was about 15 feet from the shuttle. I was dumbfounded. I'm almost positive that he did see me coming but left anyway. By this time it was about 20 after 4pm. I was supposed to check my luggage in by 4:10 and my flight was leaving at 5:10pm and I was STILL at the car rental place. I called Sarah and told her what had happened and she couldn't even speak. She couldn't even find any words of encouragement because she was blown away by the way this whole trip had gone for us. The next shuttle showed up about 10 minutes later. We loaded up, with the help of a very nice man, and finally were on our way to the airport. Travis called me while I was in line to check my bags and he was really sweet about the whole thing. He told me to keep calm and if I did miss my flight, that it would be ok and I could just get on the next one. Yeah, easy for him to say whe he doesn't have to be the one chasing a crazy baby through the airport for possibly hours! What sucked was that, while I was explaining the whole thing to Travis on the phone, I know that the people in front of me heard that I might miss our flight and no one offered for us to go ahead of them. People suck. When I finally got up to check my bags, I explained the situation (very quickly) to the lady and she said that as long as security didn't hold me up for too long, I'd probably just be able to make my flight, even though we might be the last ones on the plane. I ran to the escalator (I wasn't about to wait for the stinkin' elevator) and akwardly balanced Cole all of the way up. When we got to the top, I saw the line for security. Yeah, that's right, it not only wound back and forth about ten times but then it also extended back over this bridge/walkway thing. There were easily 100+ people in line. I accepted my defeat and turned to walk to the end of the line when I heard a woman behind me saying, "excuse me...excuse me miss...excuse me...can you get her attention for me." I didn't think she was speaking to me but another woman that I was facing said, "that lady is talking to you". I turned around and saw a security woman jesturing for me to come to her. I walked over and she said..."you can use the family lane"!!!!! The clouds opened and the angels sang!!!! There was a line with about 3 small families waiting in a line next to her to go through security. FAMILY LANE!!!!!!! I almost started to cry. We whipped past security, ran to our gate and walked right on the plane. The plane ride home was pretty uneventful because I kept the dvd player with us and we watched Monster Inc. all the way home. I also had M&Ms and water to help with the crankiness and popping ears. I had never been so happy to come home in all of my life:) It was a fun trip and honestly we had near misses all over the place, so it wasn't that terrible. It was just one thing after another, after another, after another...you get the idea. Needless to say, I probably won't be going on any solo kid trips for awhile. Good times.