Day 9 -Friday June 28th, 2013

It's always sad when vacation ends. Sadly today my mother/sister vacation had to come to a close. They got up and packed then the car service picked them up at 11:15. I had such a good time with the two of them. It was so great to spend so much time with my sister Katie. Since her and Elizabeth are the last two kids and both girls they get the group title of  "the girls" in our family. So typically when I go home I spend time with "the girls." And only get a few hours of one on one time. This whole trip, but especially the day at Disney, was some real quality bonding time with my little sister. I actually learned a lot about her that I didn't know. She is very artistic. I was so surprised with how well she could think about photography and videos. She also was very thoughtful of others. Several times she would make comments about helping people or feeling sorry for someone. It's just so neat to watch a girl mature into a young women like she has. Other times she reminded me of myself at her age... So boy crazy. She was always on the look out for a cute boy. One time a nice looking fellow came and sat next to her on the metro and she turned bright red. Mom and I just laughed at her. She also got hit on A TON!! I was really surprised. Sometimes I was surprised they never complimented me on my beauty but I guess that's what happens when you get married, old and pregnant. I was also sad to see my mom go home. I was sad we didn't get more one on one time but I'll get that when I go home in Aug. She was such a trooper to put up with Katie and I dragging her around kingdom come. She was so patient when Katie and I would ask her to take our picture over and over and over again. What a great mom. She doesn't even care for traveling but came just so
Katie would have some one to fly home with. I'm always impressed by the sacrifices she makes for her kids. Not only does traveling (especially to another country) stress her out but she's not one to enjoy spending a lot of money and this trip was a little more pricey than the typical one. Anyways it was so incredible wonderful to have the two of them with me and to make memories with them. I was sad that our journey together had to come to an end. Luckily for me I was starting a new vacation with Mike the following day. I spent the rest of the day relaxing and recovering for the week before. I did laundry then took it to the laundry mat to dry.

 Mike called to tell me the following horror story he was dealing with at home:

On Thursday night he was driving home from his ball game. His phone rang so he answered it. Since he was so close to home he didn't bother putting it on speaker. As bad luck would have it he got pulled over for using his cell phone while driving (second time for that.) When the officer checked his registration (well technically mine since he was driving my Toyota) he found that it was expired. We just bought the car last April and assumed our registration started then and it was good for two years but apparently it expired in January. So then he got a ticket for driving a car with an expired registration AND the cop towed the car!! He towed it right then and there and made Mike walk home. Luckily he was only a mile away. (As a side note, this cop was incredible rude to him and was very unprofessional. I hope all of the city cops aren't like that. Its an embarrassment to the uniform for them to treat someone so poorly when their "crime" was so minimal.)The next morning he got up bright and early to go to the DMV at 7:45 when it opened so he could renew the cars registration. Come to
find out since the car is in my name he can't renew it, he needed my actually signature. I couldn't fill the form out from Paris and fax it, it had to be the actually signature. 

We have always assumed that since we are married that legally what's mine is his and visa/versa, but apparently not. Even if you are married and you own property in just your name and your spouse does not hold power of attorney for you, then you have no legal right to that property. Holy cow!!! So there was literally nothing Mike could do to get the car registered. We thought about having him forge my signature and take it the another DMV but were nervous that if they found out he forged it he would be arrested and miss his flight. So we had to accept the fact the we would be paying $250 in ticket fees $170 to get the car out of the pound and $28 for each of the 13 days the car would be
Left in the impound. That adds up to almost $800... Ouch! After all that bad luck we checked to see if Mikes car was ok on it's registration and of course his was expired too. He didn't have enough time to get it taken care of before he left that night either. So we were panicking that with our luck he would get pulled over on the way to the airport and have his car taken away then miss his flight. Luckily we know a really amazing guy. One of our friends called Mike to hear his horror story and without mike even asking him to take him to the airport Justin read between the lines and offered to take him. What a great guy. So despite the loss of money we actually learned several valuable life lessons and are grateful for them. Everything happens for a reason right? Of course right!

After Mike and I finally accepted our losses I got off the phone and took a heavenly nap. It was much needed! Then it was time for dinner and some good old classic Disney Movies ( The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Sword and the Stone ) while I waited for Mike to confirm he got to the airport ok and that mom and Katie got picked up from the airport ok. Then I crashed.