Where do I start?

THANKSGIVING WEEK PART ONE

This week has been a little crazy and ended up completely different than we had planned. Let's start at the beginning...

 My sister, Betsy, and her family moved to Portland a while ago.  They had been living fairly close to us for a few years and it was really fun to have them around! Our kids are all about the same age and were able to become good friends. Then, they moved away and we miss them. When I heard my parents were heading their way for Thanksgiving, we decided we'd really like to go too.  We heard the drive through the Blue Mountains in Oregon could be bad, so we were watching the weather before we made a decision.  About a week before, the weather was looking okay, so we made final plans to go.  Kendall took off 2 days from work. I spent half a day doing laundry, packing bags and cleaning the house. We pulled out of the driveway about 3:00 Monday afternoon. The roads were slick, but not too bad and we trudged on, stopped for a quick dinner in Burley and then headed back on the road, hoping to make it to a hotel in Boise.  Just a bit passed Burley, as we approached Twin Falls, the snow started to dump down.  It was dark, snowy and super slippery.  By the time we got to Twin, we decided to just sleep there tonight and go the rest in the morning when we could start in the daylight.

The hotel was fun, as always. The boys went swimming and loved every minute of it.  They all slept like logs and liked the breakfast and cartoons in the morning. Kendall and I got on the computer and checked the weather and roads.  Out ultimate goal....decide whether to continue to trudge on through to Oregon or to turn around and head home while we were still not far from it. We debated. We weighed the pros and cons.  We wanted to go. We were already packed. Heck, we were already on the trip. Betsy and Russ were expecting us. Our boys were super excited.  But, our van is no good on the icy roads.  In all our watching the weather, we had really only been paying attention to the weather in the Blue Mountains and neglected to watch the whole route.  If we could get through Idaho, there was less precipitation expected in Oregon, but it was freezing temperatures and there's no way to tell if the roads are icy.  The days we are supposed to come back....Saturday and Sunday.... show snow coming back through again.  Even our little trip last night to Twin Falls took much longer than it was supposed to and it was stressful and scary at times.  We've been in that situation before out going and doing on icy roads and wondering why we are choosing to put our family in a dangerous situation. We decided to head back home.  I called Betsy and told her we weren't coming and she was nice and understanding, though I knew she was disappointed and her kids would be too.  We told our kids and they were all sad....Sam bawled.  I cried, too. I wanted to see my sister and her family and let our kids play and be friends. I wanted to just sit around and spend a week with my family. But, we felt good about our decision and so we packed the van back up and headed back toward home.

This was our view for the 2 1/2 hours stopped on the highway. Video below.

It had been snowing, but the roads weren't too bad.  We got about 20 miles southeast of Burley when suddenly snow was blowing across the road and we could only see about 10 feet in front of us.  We were only driving in those conditions for a few minutes before traffic completely stopped.  Thankfully, the truck behind us saw us in time to stop.  Then, we sat there. And sat there.  The snow was blowing across the road. Our van kept getting covered and Kendall would go out and clear off the windows so we'd be ready to move whenever that happened.  The boys had to pee, so we opened our sliding door just a crack and they stood there with the wind and snow just blowing on them and did their business. I got Dodge out and fed him.  We watched a little show. We read some. We sang some Christmas songs (the boys were so impressed that I knew all the reindeer's names).  We ate fruit snacks and pretzels.  About 2 1/2 hours later, we finally started to move.  We went slowly forward in the blowing snow for a mile or 2 and then they turned us around across the median.  We had to head back toward Burley. As we passed by, we could see that they had completely shut down that portion of the road now.  Gratefully, my grandma lives in Burley, so we called her and stopped in to wait out the storm. It was 3:30 now and we had left our hotel about 10:30.  We'd been in the van that entire time and ended up about 45 miles from where we had started. Maybe we would have been better if we'd headed toward Oregon?  I don't know. We asked ourselves things like that this entire week....maybe if we'd just left a little earlier? What if we'd just stopped there for a bit? Who knows! We waited at my grandmas and watched online for the road to open up.  It was bedtime and it was still closed, so we brought our stuff in and slept at Grandma's.  The boys slept downstairs with Kendall and Dodge and I slept in a room upstairs. The boys had a blast playing with her toys, watching Disney Channel and sliding down her plastic covered stair case. Grandma made pancakes in the morning and we checked the computer...still closed, estimated opening time 10:00 AM. So, we played some more until about 10:00 when the road opened.  The rest of the trip back to Logan was uneventful and almost at full speed.

Finally, 48 hours later, after only having traveled as far as Twin Falls (usually a 3 hour drive), we were back home.