A New Year

Well, we are now living in 2017.  I kind of fell off the blogging train in 2015 and now I'm climbing back on board so I can continue to keep records of my life and the lives of my family members.  We just got home from a wonderful trip to Texas for Christmas.  I know that Christmas happened in 2016, but I'm going to open my blog with pictures and memories from Christmas so I don't forget!

 For Christmas 2016, we went to Texas.  In August we were so excited because we found tickets for $300 each. We bought them and never thought about them again until December 17th, when we headed down to the airport to fly out.  We drove to Jacqui's house that morning and then she dropped us off curbside and we stood in line to check in our baggage.  We were shocked and surprised to find out that our flights had been cancelled.  They told us they could get us to Texas 5 days later.  Bryce turned to me and said, "Let's just drive."

 We tried to rent a vehicle to drive to Texas so we could at least use the returning flight but there were no vehicle available so we drove Jacqui back home, grabbed some Little Ceasar's, stopped a Wal-Mart for pillows, blankets, snacks, dual DVD players, movies, activities and games.  We ran into Santa Claus and he wished us well on our way!

I still don't know why this happened but I do know that Heavenly Father blessed up with beautiful weather and roads so we could make it safely to College Station.  We left Clinton at 1:15 pm and started our 23 hour journey to Texas.  We were tired so we slammed down some Dr. Pepper and candy.  The kids did a great job and they had positive attitudes most of the way. Poor Parker had told everyone for months that she was flying in a big airplane to Texas.  Hopefully she will experience that one day!

We hooked up the DVD players, put on some ear phones and the kids watched the movies, ate food, created with PlayDoh and just visited and talked with each other.  I definitely think it was the hardest on Parker.  She did not understand why we were driving for hours on end.  She kept saying that she wanted to go home. She would ask where our home was and say, "let's go home. my home is my favorite...let's go home"

 The roads and the weather was good until we got about 15 miles from Cortez, Colorado and that is when we hit some black ice.  I never felt us slip but it came out of nowhere and it was kind of scary.  I was stressed and tired and ready to stop for a while.  We made it into Cortez safely.  We stopped to eat dinner at Arby's and ask about the weather to Gallup.  The guys in Arby's didn't know that the distance from Cortez to Gallup was 2 hours, but we soon found out as we kept on driving.  After that, the weather was great.  It was freezing, but great. We were blessed with a functioning, warm vehicle and the kids were great so we decided to drive all through the night.  I had to grab a power protein bar to help me get through the night!

On Sunday morning, after driving 20 hours, we decided to stop for breakfast at McDonald's.  We found a street called Cooper and took some pictures by in the 5 degree weather.  The kids enjoyed getting out of the car and getting some fresh air.  We ran a little bit and tried to move our legs!

Cooper loves road trips so he was so excited to be driving to Texas.  He had a great attitude the whole time and that was nice to have moral support from him.  It's bad enough having to drive that far, but the fact that the kids were happy made it much more enjoyable and it was good to spend the time with them.

We were only 15 minutes away, but we had to take a potty break out along the roadside.  This wasn't the only time we had to stop on the side of the road for a pee break.  Pee breaks are great!

When we saw the barn with AGGIE stuff all over it, we knew we were close.  We texted everyone a picture of the barn and Sean couldn't believe we drove through the night and that we were almost to College Station.  What a whirlwind trip to Texas!