On Christmas morning, we woke up to snow.
Lovely, white, glistening snow.
Perfect, right? A white Christmas! Everyone dreams of a white Christmas!
Except for when you are wanting to get started on a very long road trip; then a white Christmas is not so perfect.
We said lots of prayers and crossed all of our fingers and toes and made sure that our van was packed and ready to go at a moments notice. That moment came around 10 am on Christmas day when the snow let up and we decided to take a chance.
Let the road trip begin!
I have been wanting to make this trip for a very long time. My sister and her family live about an hour way from Houston, TX. We had plans to go for Spring Break about 3 years ago, but then that little thing called cancer showed up in our lives and well, you know the rest of that story.
Finally, the stars all aligned (or somewhat aligned), and we decided to take the holiday break to go and visit them. It is about a 24 hour drive if you do it straight through. With four kiddos, that was definitely not a possibility, so we made the journey a part of the adventure. We drove through some beautiful places and made a lot of fun memories. Christmas night we stayed in Monticello, UT. What did we have for Christmas dinner? Just a little fine dining from the local Maverick is all. Jealous? The kiddos had fun in the pool and we snuggled and watched a little Snowball Express. I love that show. Everyone was out like a light by 8:30 pm. All in all, a really great first day.
Day 2 dawned beautifully, although very cold. We knew that we were still going to encounter some wet roads. We were just praying that they wouldn't be too slippery. I will say that our prayers were answered in the fact that we did not get in a horrendous accident, but dry roads? Not so much. I think Mark and I figured that out of the whole 24 hour drive there, we had about 5 hours of dry roads. Everything else was either wet, slushy, or just downright scary. I feel so blessed for the angels that were with us on that journey.
We drove through the state of New Mexico on Day 2 and made it all the way to Clovis for the night. We found an awesome Italian restaurant for dinner. I seriously have never had Italian food like that. It was amazing. We took another dip in the pool, (an indoor pool was first on our list when looking for places to stay) and then rested up for another full day of traveling. Day Three started out a little less cold, and we were hopeful that the rest of the journey would be a little less stressful, driving wise. Heading into Texas was definitely better, although we still had wet roads. It rained most of the day. We decided to stop in Waco, TX and visit the Dr. Pepper Museum. I am so happy that I made that little discovery. Have you ever had a Dr. Pepper float? Delicious. We finally pulled in to the McLane residence about 7:30 pm. It was fun to go in and surprise the kiddos who didn't know we were coming. Then the party truly began.
The next day was a Sunday, and it was still raining. We went to church in the morning and spent the rest of the afternoon just chilling at the house. We so appreciate Chad and Danette for letting us invade their place. It was so fun to be together. They have a beautiful place and the kids had a ball there. Ellie was in heaven with all of the farm animals.
The next day, we all piled in our van and their RV and headed even further south to Galveston. Did we find warm weather there? Nope. I think it stayed pretty close to 50 degrees all day long. That didn't stop us from having fun though. We went to Moody Gardens and went through the aquarium and rain forest pyramids they have there. Pretty cool places.
On the way home we stopped at Bucee's, the Texas gas station anomaly. This place is huge! It is bigger then most grocery stores. You know it's going to be an experience when they have grocery carts at a gas station. Pretty crazy. We also stopped to get some Texas BBQ. That was one of two places that Mark requested to go on our trip. He wanted to have some good BBQ and find a Waffle House. I am happy to say that we accomplished both of those goals.
The following day, we headed to Houston so we could do some temple work at the Houston Temple. My dad had been doing some family history research and found a few names of people in his family who had not yet been baptized. It was a very cool experience to be baptized for people in your own family. Even though I have never met these people in this life, it was hard not to feel a connection. Josh, Emma, and I were able to be baptized for them and Mark confirmed them with the gift of the Holy Ghost. All strange words, I know, if you are not of our faith, but I can tell you that this experience of doing temple work for someone who has passed on, is like nothing else I have ever experienced.
After the temple, we found Mark's beloved Waffle House and stopped in for a bite to eat. Have you ever been inside a Waffle House? If you haven't, let me enlighten you. Imagine a dumpy little diner with great food and interesting people and that is pretty much a Waffle House in a nutshell. Needless to say, we were slightly overdressed and received more than a few strange looks. But the waffles were good and that's all that matters.
That afternoon, we went to the Woodlands Mall and watched "Into the Woods". I will say, it was okay. I love the music and the actors were really great, but I am undecided about the play itself. The kids were enthralled by the fairy tale aspect of things and when we got home, they spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the next day recreating scenes from the movie. I love watching little imaginations at work.
On New Year's Eve, we drove to Spring, TX, to meet up with my Uncle Roger and his family. We had lunch with them there and it was fun to see them all. Spring is a very cool old town with a ton of fun little shops and things to see. It was still very cold, so we did not do a lot of walking around. We did find a fun toy store and candy store. That's all the kids wanted or needed, so we were pretty much set after that. We went back to Danette's and ordered more BBQ. The kids had fun throwing smoke bombs and we capped off the night with fireworks and sparklers.
Oh, and we did burn a giant 5 lb. gummy bear.
Definitely the high light of the trip.
I can't believe my son actually ate some of that.
We partied until midnight by playing games and just being together. It was a great New Year's Eve other than the fact that we were concerned about what would be happening the next day when we were supposed to be driving home. Pretty much all of New Mexico was getting slammed with a huge winter storm and we had to head straight through it.
We woke up New Year's Day and the forecast had not changed. We decided that it would probably be best to take the southern most route back home. Even if it meant adding a little time to the total driving time. Well, as luck would have it, the storm did a little shift-a-roo after we had started on our way and we pretty much just drove right along side it the whole way home. It was awesome.
Poor Mark. It was a tad on the stressful side for him and rightly so. As I was looking through our pictures, I realized that I did not really have any of the roads when they were covered in snow and ice. Probably because I was too busy praying that we would make it home alive.
We were hoping to make it to Roswell, NM that first day, but we had to stop in Pecos, TX for the night. I can honestly say that I never want to visit Pecos, TX again. I'm sure it is a lovely place in the daytime, but the nighttime? Not so much. The last few hours of the drive that night were horrible. We could not find a hotel room because everyone was getting off the roads and holing up for the night. We finally found one in Pecos that had a really nice indoor pool, but that was about the extent of its niceness. The room was okay, but overall, it was not a great hotel. The best part about it? It was the most expensive night out of all the hotels we stayed in, plus we got to buy microwave pizzas and Cup-O-Noodles from the hotel's concession shop for dinner. It was really the perfect way to end a very long and stressful day on the roads. Laughable really. The kids didn't seem to mind. They were just happy to get out of the car and have a pool to swim in. Another thing I need to mention is that Mark had finally come down with the nasty cold that I had the week before Christmas. So on top of the driving, he felt like crap. Happy New Year!
When we left the next morning, our van was covered in a layer of ice that eventually fell off the car somewhere in New Mexico. We prayed harder than we had ever prayed before that we would make it to our next destination safely, although we were undecided where that would be. We debated back and forth between just making it to Roswell and making a day of it there or heading on to Albuquerque, which would be much closer to home and less driving on the third day.
The road out of Pecos was a slushy mess with more storms building up. I kept looking at the Ipad at the weather apps and the road apps until finally I lost my mind and just could not look at another doppler radar screen. The storm just seemed to keep following us and we could not escape it. We finally settled on just spending the day in Roswell and even booked a hotel there.
Then we got to Roswell and it was beautiful there! The radar had been showing snow there most of the day and there was very little to be found. The skies in the direction to Albuquerque were gorgeous; just taunting us to go on. So after some deliberation, we cancelled the hotel room and continued on our way to Albuquerque. Sorry aliens. We will have to visit you another day.
We made it safely to Albuquerque and stayed there for the night. We went to Old Town and had a little bit of fun there after another long day of traveling. We were all looking forward to the next day with mixed feelings. We knew we would finally be home at the end of it, but we were not looking forward more time in the car.
The final day of our adventure was really beautiful. As we left Albuquerque, I looked behind us and was in awe at the beauty of the sunrise behind us. We ran into a little bit of weather over some of the mountain passes, but overall, it was not a bad day of driving.
I have to say that my kids are rockstars. This trip included lots and lots of car time; even when we were in Texas. They were so good. They all got along really well and kept themselves entertained with books, toys, tvs, and video games. It wasn't until we were about 4 hours away from home when Abbie and Ellie finally broke. They had had enough of each other and enough family bonding time in the car. We pulled over the car and had a nice little chat outside in the cold weather. It was enough to snap them out of it and sustain them for the next four hours of being together.
This trip was filled with so many fun memories. I have only touched on a few hear and wish I had time to write more about it. Even with all of the bad weather we encountered, I am so glad that we finally had the opportunity to go to Texas and be with Danette's family there. I almost forgot to mention that my parents and sister, Sharise and her husband, Craig, were there as well. We saw some gorgeous sites along the way, had some good conversations and laughs, had our first and definitely not our last Dr. Pepper float, and so much more.
I leave you with a little video I put together to recap our drive time. As I was putting it together I realized that I never took any pictures of us in the car. I think I did take one of Mark driving, but that's it! No kids, no selfies of me. Oh well. Maybe next time. :)
(PS. It looks like we are driving really fast in this video, but we're not. I sped it up so you wouldn't have to sit through 20 minutes of video. Instead it's just over 5. You are welcome.)
