So we went up for the reunion this weekend.  Friday we drove to Janesville and stayed with my Aunt Lois.  It took us about 3 hours to get there which wasn’t bad AT ALL, especially considering there was a semi lodged under an overpass on the Kennedy.  Saturday morning we left early and got up there around noon, just in time for lunch.  Our hummus did not go over very well…Northern Wisconsoners are not inclined to try out new-fangled middle easter dips.  Then, when I went to get it later so we could eat it I found out someone threw it away!  I had a really good time all day.  All of my Aunt’s and Uncles were there except Uncle John, but his daughter Audrey flew in from CO so she was his representative.  Sara didn’t have that great of a time.  Sara likes to be entertained constantly, but I’m happy just sitting and talking to everybody.  The only thing that put a damper on everything was the blazing hot heat and humidity.  That wasn’t so bad in the shade though.

Now here’s where things get dicey…

So people were saying it was supposed to rain, but when we went to bed there was not a cloud in the sky.  Still, I decided that I better empty my pockets and put my phone, etc. in the car so in case it did rain it didn’t get wet.  I also rolled the windows all the way up in case it rained.  Sara moved her puse into the front seat as well.  Then we got into a fight because Sara insisted that we needed to lock the car doors since her purse was in there and I said that we didn’t need to because we were hours from anywhere in a big field surrounded by hundreds of my relatives (216 by official count).  Finally Sara locked the doors in a huff.  So we got into the tent and Sara realized her pajamas were in the car.  So I went out to get them and that’s when we realized both of our sets of keys were now locked in the car!  So I went back down to where everybody was and Rusty (the guy who owns the place) got us a wire hanger.  I gave a feeble attempt to open the door but I realized it would be much easier when it was light out, so I went to bed and Sara slept in her clothes.

About 4:00 it started to rain a little bit so we zipped up our windows in our tent.  That’s when all hell broke loose.  Some sort of rogue Wisconsin hurricane blew through and tried to rip our tent to shreds.  There was so much thunder and lightening that there wasn’t a second when the sky was dark.  Even with the tent zipped up and our eyes closed, we could still see some of the bolts!!  The wind was blowing so hard that the tent walls on our 6 man tent would almost touch us in the middle of the tent.  Our tent did an AMAZING job of holding together and keeping most of the rain out, but with the wind blowing that hard and the rain coming in vertical, the wind would lift the rain fly up and the rain would come in the mesh sides.  I quickly got dressed (Sara was sleeping in her clothes since her pjs were locked in the car)(with our umbrellas and some extra clothes) and we got ready to run for it.  I honestly thought it was a tornado and our lives were in danger.

We decided to wait it out some and eventually it quieted down a little bit.  We were shivering in the middle of the tent huddled under the sheet to keep it from raining on our faces.  To be honest though, all in all, it really wasn’t that bad.  We had very little stuff with us since we were only staying 1 night, so we had a couple of feet of buffer space on all sides of us, plus we were on an air mattress so we were off the puddles on the ground.  We stayed pretty dry, all things considered.  The most wet I got was when I went to slap my ball cap on and it was like dumping a cup of water on my head!  There was a huge lake of water in the tent, but nothing was resting in it.

So finally the next morning we woke up and then of course had to deal with the locked car.  Also it was raining pretty good.  We tried for an hour and a half and couldn’t get in with the hanger, so finally we had to call the police and get them to come out and do it.  They were super nice (the posed for pictures, including one of my Grandma up against the car like she was getting arrested) and popped it open in roughly 10 seconds.  They were really a bright spot in the whole thing.

So anyway, everything ended up working out pretty well, other than it raining the whole time we took our tent down so everything’s pretty wet.  We are trying to dry it on the balcony now, but we can’t really put the tent up or anything, so I don’t know how well that’s going to work.

Okay, that’s all.