Wow...what a weekend!!!!
Our vacation officially started on Friday night when we decided to head to West Virginia to celebrate an early Christmas with Ryan's side of the family. We thought if we left early enough we could get a head of the storm. We headed out and within 30 minutes of being on the road the snow started. It came down slow and steady at first and then started to come down fast and furious. About 10 miles before we hit the interstate, we hit a major backup. Apparently there are a number of hills that you must maneuver before you get to the highway. People were afraid to go down them because they knew that they would not get back up. We ended up sitting on the road for about 45 minutes before we decided to find the nearest hotel to stay the night. I also must add that while all this was going on Ryan was talking to his dad in West Virginia who was telling him that the interstate was closed down because of the weather. The first hotel I found was about 0.5 mile away so we decided to go around the massive backup and get to the hotel. What they forgot to tell me was that the hotel was at the top of the hill. We had major problems getting up th hill but were finally able to make it to the top of the hill after we helped out some stranded travelers.
The next morning we got up and found that it had snowed about 6-10 inches more and that we were stuck for the moment. It was hard to entertain a 5 year old in a hotel room when not planned. We ended up watching a lot of tv and taking plenty of naps. The downside to the hotel...they only served a continental breakfast daily. Around noon or so we started to get hungry. Thank goodness that Ryan was a cub scout...he is always prepared. He had MREs in his car. For those of you that don't know, a MRE is a Meal Ready to Eat. It is what the military uses in the field. They are not gourmet but they were something to eat to get us by. Later that night the hotel had pizzas brought in from Dominos. Ryan continued to shovel our cars and got them moved to a better spot by days end.
When we got up on Sunday morning, the sun was out and the snow had finally stopped. After breakfast, Ryan went out and met up with a group of guys from the hotel to help dig us out. Within in a few hours, we had a path to get us down the hill and out of the hotel parking lot. This is what the roads look like when we were driving home....
We finally were on the road and back to our house. What we didn't know is that we were leaving one problem to head to another problem. When we got home, we found out that we could not get into our driveway because we had over 20 inches of snow and that they snow plows had plowed all the snow in our way. See what I mean....
Ryan and I spent the next few hours shoveling the snow so we could park out cars in the driveway. See the beauty of our work...
Well, we are thankful to be home but sad that we didn't get to spend the weekend with our family. I think we are going to start a fire, enjoy a good dinner and go to bed early. We are all exhausted from our weekend!Hope everyone has a great week!
Love
Missy
