We made it! After the kids Christmas program Sunday night we left for our big Christmas trip, driving all night to southern Oregon and reaching our destination at 8:30am. The kids slept most of the way and we only had to make 3 stops. Our favorite quote on the first leg of our trip was Keely, 5 minutes into the drive..."Oh!! I forgot to fall asleep!". As we went through Sacramento we hit 100,000 miles in our trusty Saturn.
When we arrived at my parents they took over so Geoff and I could get some much needed sleep. About 8:30pm we left for the 2nd leg of our journey being well warned by all we met of the impending road conditions we would face along the way. Outside of Salem the roads were pretty dicey but Geoff did a great job driving through the snow. There were no lanes visible because the snow covered everything, but thankfully visibility was good and it wasn't actually snowing at the time. When we neared Portland the signs told us we needed our chains so over to the side of the freeway we went, in between big rigs. Geoff put the chains on "Dykstra style" (a.k.a. in shorts) at 1:30am. The kids stayed asleep the whole time!
We crawled through the Portland area and were finally able to take the chains off when we shortly after we entered Washington. The scenery was beautiful though! (except for all the spun out cars in the mounds of snow on the side of the road). After a breakfast break at a McDonalds with an indoor playground we had another two hours in the car and made it safe and sound to Geoff's parents on Tuesday morning at about 11. Phew! We just made it between storms. It snowed all night on Tuesday and then most of the day on Wednesday....somewhere between 18 to 20 inches. We celebrated Christmas eve with Geoff's family and then spent a mellow day at home today since the Christmas service was cancelled at church due to snow.
Here's a glimpse of some of the fun we've been having!
The boys in the snow.
The girls gathered bowls full of snow and we poured good 'ol Canadian maple syrup over the snow...mmmmm!
