travel...

first, a tiny bit of background... my mom gave me a camera for Christmas... so i took about a million pictures of our trip out to AZ... and i loved it... so now i'm really trying to pare down the number of pictures i post here (though it may not seem like it).



yep... i even have to show the pic of the camera...

where to begin... we planned on driving about 18 hours from paul's work straight through to AZ thurs afternoon, and i even made a paper chain for the kids with places and activities for them to look forward to (and not to ask 'are we there yet') along the way. we always drive through the night if possibel because when the children are asleep they are happy and no one usually has to stop for the bathroom (roughly every half hour when they are awake...). everything was going fine til we got to new mexico. land of enchantment. or so they say... we were routed off the highway around 3 am and told no one was going anywhere so we might as well get comfortable (HA). there were literally hundreds and perhaps thousands of other vehicles routed off where were, we certainly couldn't see any end in sight, and we found a place to stop for the night. fortunately that meant that the kids could get out of their car seats, and they slept the better for it. paul turned the car on every hour or so to turn the heat back on, because it was rather cold (we almost gave the kids their Christmas presents--sleeping bags--early, but decided they were warm enough with their blankets, especially as they barely woke enough to get unbuckled). it was a long night. by 8.30am, we decided to try our luck elsewhere. we knew another highway that runs roughly parallel to the one we were on, and went southwest to it, then we went back northwest to re-connect to the one we were on originally, but about 30 miles further down, because ALL the highways in NM were closed for the duration of the snow. folks, it was 2 days before Christmas, and the huge snowfall seemed to be about 2-3 inches. i'm sure there were places that were more, but it really wasn't that bad. the snowplows were clearly running all night long, and i think if they'd let the cars continue to pass it would have been fine, but it was obviously not my call. so this was our view for the next 2 hours:

 as we sat and waited for the road to open (this was after lunch). in the 2 hours we sat there, dozens of cars were sent back, and eventually they circled around and came and parked on the road (when there were too many for the police to send them back). if you can see the black cruiser facing us just past that black car, it was the policeman, we were that close to the barricade. we made some friends, and paul took the kids on a short walk, but since we were planning for Christmas in AZ we didn't have any real winter gear, so they mostly stayed in the car too. (ps, even more frustrating, we could even see some cars occasionally that they were letting drive OUT of the other side of the highway, so it was clearly passable)


note, afton needed my sweatshirt. that's how unprepared we were for snow.

the kids were AMAZING!!! they were mostly playing and being happy, despite being cooped up in the car for so long (there weren't any places to stay in the little town we were stuck in) and i was proud of them!

hooray for toys (and books)



even malachi was happy as long as we didn't try to buckle him!

eventually a lady came running towards her car calling to her friends/family "they're letting us through" and there was a mass ruch to the cars, paul had ours on and inching into traffic as i was frantically helping the very agreeable and helpful kids into their carseats! i don't think anyone will ever know for sure if the lady was just ensuring that they make it to their Christmas, or if they really were letting us through, but there were plenty more people than police, so either way, it worked...

our view as we finally continued to drive. the roads don't look very scary to me!

and a view out my passanger side window, the sides of the road don't look too bad either!

long story short (too late)... we made it to grandma w's house almost exactly 12 hours later than we planned! but we made it, and we slept really well that night :)