GAS PRICES PUT MAJOR DAMPER ON FAMILY VACATION | CALIFORNIA SUMMER ROAD TRIP

We decided that we would answer some of the questions that you guys have been asking us in the comment section. One question we've gotten a lot is... Hello everybody welcome back to our channel. Guys it's been a few days since we've been able to film. We've had so much stuff going on between work and kids' schedules and we've been a little bit under the weather and it's just been so crazy but we are finally back on top. The kids are all feeling better and we are headed out to California today. We are gonna go spend some time with my sister and my entire family is actually gonna meet up in California. Everybody but my older brother is gonna be there for my sister's 40th birthday. That's what we're actually going out there to celebrate. So today we are gonna drive as far as Mesquite and my mom has a place there. We're gonna stay the night there and then get up tomorrow morning and finish the rest of the trip on into California. So guys hang out with us on this wonderful road trip. Hopefully we will get the kids to answer some fun questions along the way and a few things like that. Alright we got everybody loaded in the car and as you'll notice we are not in my car. This road trip would not be happening if it were not for our good friends the Hennemans. They're loaning us their big SUV for us to take to California because my car was not done. We talked to Ford a couple days ago. They do not even have a transmission for my car. They have no idea when it's going to be coming in and there was no rental cars so we had to ask the Hennemans if we could borrow their car and they were so nice and are allowing us to do that. Got everybody back hanging out watching shows, listening to music. Austin must be watching something incredibly funny. Austin's got the giggles. Guys this car as you know navigators are just kind of a fancier model of like the Ford Expeditions so it's got a lot more buttons than our car has. It took me actually a few minutes just to find out how to put it in reverse. Ours has like a little dial right here where you go from parked, reverse, neutral, drive and that's when the buttons are up here. I didn't see them there. I was kind of looking at this thing. This is like a trailer backup assist thing but I finally found that. And then typically to adjust like your seat in a normal car or a regular car it's on the side of your seat down here. If you want to adjust your seat headrest it's all right here which is kind of cool. Yeah it's actually really nice to have it like poking around down by your seat. You're just able to just grab it right there and then you can keep on going. The other thing like the seat adjusts like two different ways. The seat is like split in the middle so if you want like one leg higher or one leg lower you can adjust the front part of the seat for that but it does have the seat massagers which ours has but I don't know it's pretty cool. A lot of buttons in here. Few more features than what our car has. We are currently fighting for it on our car because it definitely fits within the lemon law. It started having issues about three months after we bought it and we've just had issues ever since so we're kind of going back and forth with them getting them to hopefully, well they're repairing the transmission right now and we actually would like to just get a brand new car out of the deal because we feel like that's what's fair. We bought a brand new car, they should have to hold up their end of the bargain and make sure we have a brand new car that runs well and does not have these kinds of issues. So keep you updated on that and see how that goes and hopefully when we get home from California we will have our car back. We like Fords but they just seem to have a transmission issue. We've owned some Chevys. We had a Suburban that went through two transmissions in a month. It was after the second transmission that we found out what was going on with it and so you know I think it really just depends on you know what year the vehicle you get that you know if it's got issues or not. But Chevys, the interiors, I feel like are not as nice and I feel like a lot of stuff was bad. You know we had a, I think it was a GMC growing up and we had to replace the starter and that thing every single year. The door handles were falling off. It was just a nightmare and Dodges are not really our flavor. So we'd like to stick with Ford but they got to fix their issues if we're going to stay with them. It's true. We've been on the road for several hours now. We got to St. George, stopped for some dinner, the kids asked if we could continue going. So we are not going to stop and stay the night in Mesquite. We're just going to keep on trudging along here and make it all the way to my sister's house tonight. We've got about five hours left ahead of us. Clay thinks he can make it all the way. I sure hope he can because honestly I am not a great nighttime driver. I start to see things in the middle of the road. Looks like we'll be there about 1 a.m. So as long as it's not any later than that I should be fine. If something comes up, if we got to stop for a little while, then we'll definitely get all the tailroom. One o'clock we should be okay. Hopefully. So that's our plan now. We're going to get all the way there, sleep in tomorrow, help my sister get the house ready for the party and probably swim a little bit. Just hang out and be able to relax before all the rest of my family shows up and the party really gets going. Since we have a lot of time to kill here in the car, we decided that we would answer some of the questions that you guys have been asking us in the comment section underneath our videos. We just have not had time to answer those and we forget about them when we're doing day-to-day stuff. So now that we have time, we're thinking about these questions and we want to get them answered for you guys. One question we have gotten a lot is how is Oliver doing? He's doing fantastic. We got the stitches out a few weeks ago and the vet said it healed up perfectly. We took him to get his hair cut yesterday and the groomer said his tail looks great, didn't hurt him at all. So grateful that it healed okay because honestly I was super concerned that, I mean, a whole array of things could have went wrong. I was really afraid that they was going to paralyze him having it cut off when he's that old. So thankfully it all went well. He's healed. He's doing great. Next most asked question probably is how is the kitchen table coming along that we started working on like forever ago? First of all, I have to put a little disclaimer in here for you guys. You probably figured this out by now, but when we start projects they're not usually fast projects. Like our yard getting done as fast as it did is, honestly, it's a record. It's the fastest project we've done in a really long time. We start stuff, we get busy with life, and we don't get back to it. So that's because all the neighbors could see it. I mean if all the neighbors could see our other projects, they'd get done a lot faster. It's true. So the next question is for you. How's the kitchen table coming along? So I worked on it and worked on it. Tried to fill the small holes and I couldn't get it just right. So there's a couple of things are wrong with it as well. Like you can see a little bit of wood on one end. So it was like black all the way down and a little bit of wood. And I was like, I don't know if I like that. So that on top of not being able to get all the holes filled, I just decided one day I'd cut all the epoxy off. You did what? I just cut all the epoxy off. I sanded it back to new. Oh my gosh. There's a cut. I'm just finding out about this. So, you know, take a few more dollars to pour it again. But the fun part is we get to pour it one more time. Oh my gosh. We're going to try to make that color how we want it. And so we're going to do less black. So we try to get that smoke color. We learned we put way too much pigment in there the first time. Didn't seem like it though at first until it hardened and dried. And then all of a sudden it was like black. I built a new form for it. It's in the form. It's ready. I use shellac on the sides of it and they said that would help seal it. But I did a lot more research and a lot of guys will just take epoxy, mix it up, put it on the sides. That'll seal it so the bubbles don't come out. And I'm going to do that. Make sure that thing's epoxy well before actually setting it in the mold and then pouring the other epoxy on. I'm going to make sure that there's a lot of airflow and that that temperature is down to like 68, 70 degrees. I think we may have had it just a little bit hot. So a little bit of a learning curve. Cost me a couple of bucks to learn that. But we're going to pour it sometime soon. I just, I've been busy trying to crank out jobs. We just got like five or six jobs going that are bigger. We've got a couple others we just found out that we've got to do. So feeling fortunate that I have work stuff coming in. Hopefully that happens here. I'm a little bit afraid that there might be a slowdown in the market, but hopefully people keep remodeling. So long story short, we're repouring that table it sounds like. So we'll definitely show you guys what number two looks like. We could pick a new color, you know, blue or something else. You know, I don't know. Maybe. A lot of people do blues. I'll think about that. Another question we've got a lot of is how's knee doing and took him to the doctor for his... I'll take this one. Okay. Clay's taking this one. His knee is doing fine. If you squeeze it, he still giggles. So I think it's okay. Okay. That's true. But we took him in for a six week checkup just the other day and the doctor totally released him to do anything and everything that he feels comfortable doing except for leg extensions. That is something he told both Austin and I that we should not be doing that with our are placed and it's just way too hard on the kneecap. So he said, do not do leg extensions, either one of you, but you can do anything else he wants to do. Our biggest concern with Austin is that his calf muscle, that area is still a little bit numb from the nerve block. It's crazy. The doctor said he has seen people that have gone like six to seven months with it still being kind of a little bit numb. So that's a little bit concerning. He wants to see him back in two months and hopefully by then the numbness will have completely worn off and nearly back to normal. He says that he's never had a customer or a patient, I should say. Not a customer. I mean, we've paid him enough money. We're customers at this point. He's never had anybody where the nerve block has not worn off. So that's what we are shooting for in the next couple months when we go back to see him. Guys, we got in extremely late last night. So we had to just go in and go to bed. So we're kind of wrapping things up at the store, about to grab some of this expensive California fuel real quick. So I've got it going right now. I'm at $74. I don't know how big the tank is here in this Navigator. I mean, this is our friend's car, obviously. So we're going to watch this thing fill up and see if this is the most expensive tank of gas I've ever purchased. I'm thinking it could hit like $80 to $200, which is just... My truck at home right now is about $140 to $150. So we hit $200. Boy, howdy. $170. I'm going to make that $174 here. Good night. All right. This car must have a 27-gallon tank. It stopped at like 26.36 because there was just a little bit of fuel left, but $174. That is by far the most expensive tank of fuel I have ever purchased in my life. I cannot wait to get out of California. Claire, what do you think? That's a lot of dollars, right? For one tank of fuel. Absolutely crazy. It's absolute nonsense. There is no reason that we are paying that much for gas right now. I know that our government wants to switch over to electric vehicles, but not everybody can do that. Not everybody can afford that. And there's not enough stations to charge everybody's car. And it takes an incredibly long time. Everybody has to retrofit their house. So, I mean, it's a great idea, but we have enough gas right now to last us 500 years here in America. So we could keep these prices low, get everything built to where we can handle it, and then switch over and save our country a lot of hassle. So $174 is insane. All right. That's enough of that. So we're going to head to the store, grab some stuff for breakfast. Carmen is laying down in the back. I don't know if we got enough sleep last night, but hopefully we'll get a few things done this morning and get an afternoon nap in. All right. We got some fruit, some muffins, some orange juice. We're going to grab some milk. We like 2% milk. What does it say? That's reduced fat milk, milk vitamin D right there. It's regular milk. We're going to do 2% milk. Perfect. Let's grab that one. We grabbed some fruit, some sausage, and some bread. And I think we got some milk because some of the kids want to do some cereal. We're going to head back and make a quick breakfast. And then I think that Terry's sister and her husband have a few projects they need some help to try and get ready for this birthday party that we're having tomorrow. While Klai's been here helping out with the kids, making breakfast, getting all that kind of stuff done, I went to Costco with my sister and picked up some food for this weekend. And we're set to start having a ton of fun. The girls are in the pool. The boys are helping my brother-in-law wash the fence and take a load to the dump. We're trying to get everything all cleaned up and ready for this great big birthday party for my sister that's going to happen tomorrow night. You guys have seen in our videos a few years ago, we were here for fall break and we filmed their amazing house and their awesome backyard. You guys, I would kill to have this backyard behind my house. It's so awesome. It's beautiful. They've done an amazing job with it. And they strung up some really cool lights out here. So when the sun goes down, it's going to feel amazing out here. And we are just so excited to be here. It's warm. It's perfect weather. And we could not be more happy to be here. How's it going out here, girls? How you guys doing? Got the boogie boards out. You guys playing a game? Yeah. So this is the run and jump on the boogie board game. Their pool is very deep, so it's hard to touch. It is deep, huh? It's a super fun pool. Yeah. Because we get our personal pool. We got our very own personal pool. Nobody's here to kick us out or tell us we can't do certain things. We can do whatever we want. Yeah, because we hold it. Hey, but listen, Carm. Be very, very careful, okay? I don't want you to slip and bonk your head. Okay. I would hate for you to get hurt. She's over here manning pressure washers, getting everything cleaned up, these washers fenced up. Okay, we brought a ton of floaties with us on this trip. Between what I had and what my sister had, we've got a floatie tower going on here. You guys going to put these in the pool? Oh, Claire's in there. You guys going to put these in the pool all at the same time? Yes. You are? All right, here we go. Holy cow. We're not even able to float around in there. Oh, we'll float. All right, we've officially blown up every single floating device we could find around here, and the pool is completely jam-packed with floaties. How are you even swimming in here with all these floaties? It's not that many. That's a lot of floaties. We bought these great big ones last time we were here, huh? We're going to have so much fun with all the cousins once they get here. These little drink holders are so cute. I need another floatie to help me survive. Maybe you should use one of the like 100 that are over there. Nah, these ones are better. I don't think that thing's going to hold you up. No, it certainly is. We are putting a ton of effort into the backyard to get it all cleaned up and organized, ready to go for the party tomorrow. It's coming along great. I'm super excited for this to all come together. Super excited to share it with you guys. Clay is helping out in the garage with some doors that my brother-in-law made a few years ago. I just haven't had time to get them painted and hung up, so Clay is volunteering to help out with that today since he doesn't have a lot going on. I'm working on that and getting it ready to go. That's about how long my projects take, too. A few years. A few years, it's true. So you have to let a project season before you finish it. Really think about it, make sure it's going to work out for you still before you complete it all. So I've got them caulked. I'm going to let it dry and then I've got some primer. I'm going to actually move them out here. We've got some plastic set up outside, so I'll put the soft horses out there. We'll get all the doors primed, let that dry, and then paint the backs. So you want to get the backs completely done, let that harden, and then maybe tomorrow morning flip them over and spray the front. So typical in your painting, always want to end on the front because if there's any issues on the back, not a big deal to touch those up, but you want the fronts perfect, so spray those last. Good tip. Guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. We are super excited to be here in California. It's been a little bit since we've been on vacation and to be honest, I've kind of been thinking like what we're going to do throughout the summer because we sold our boat. That took up a ton of our time and it made us feel like we could be on vacation almost every single week of the summer. But we're going to get creative, come up with some different fun things to do to entertain us and the kids, and spending a few days here in San Diego is definitely the best way to kick off summer. I'm excited. Guys, come back tomorrow and see how this birthday party turns out. It's going to be an awesome day. Thanks for watching. We love you. This guy's back here tomorrow.