The Drive Home

  

So the drive home from Colorado last week was interesting to say the least.  The Mister thought, "Why go the way we came?  We'll take a different way!"  (I'm paraphrasing here.)  So, instead of taking a nice 4-lane divided highway to Albuquerque (to hop on I-40), we drove over to Pagaso Springs, and then south to Santa Fe.  That leg of the trip was OK.  We kept saying we would stop in the next town to grab lunch, but the next town never had a fast food joint.  So we finally made it to Santa Fe, stopped at a big truck stop, and took a break.  We bought the sisters lunch from the Subway in the truck stop.  Nice.

From Santa Fe, we took I-25 for a ways until we needed to take another state highway south to I-40.  The Mister took it upon himself to use the navigation system in the suburban.  We now know that when given the choice between "fastest" and "shortest"  a) they are not the same... think wisely; and b) consult the map in your hands to determine the size/quality of the road; and c) go the way you've been before!  I don't remember exactly what he chose, but we ended up on state highway 3 (otherwise known as "A Trip Through the Backwoods of HippieLand New Mexixo").  I took some pictures of signs we encountered on this scenic drive...

 This should have sent off warning signs in our heads when we first saw it, but no...

This one made me laugh...
I guess the people in backwoods NM can't read, so instead of the normal sign "Watch for Falling Rocks", they just have a picture of rocks falling from the cliff onto your car.

Throughout the week, we had seen signs for Elk.  On this road we even saw signs for cows.  But this takes the cake.  It reminds me of that part in Cars where they go "cow-tipping" except that it's "tractor-tipping."  Right?

This one isn't as funny, except that we kept waiting and waiting and waiting, yet the road never went down to one lane.   I guess  their road was upgraded sometime along the way, yet noone fixed the sign.
Oh, and most of the time we were going slow, because of all the tight curves, and so 25 was not unheard of.

Really?

Congested?  By whom?  None of the "towns" had more than 8 houses... so how was it going to get congested?  Really.

And last but not least, this is the sign we encountered when we (finally) made it to the interstate.  I'm glad we are educated people and knew which way to go and what highway to get on, because this sign is not really useful.  Especially to someone from out of state and has never heard of Santa Rosa or Encino.
Nice.





We finally made it to Amarillo, where we stopped for the night.  All along we had heard about this storm system that was coming through that might drop some snow flurries.  But we're from Texas, and so we never know if we can trust the weatherman.  They get so excited about impending storms and a lot of times, they exaggerate.  So we checked into our hotel and then went out for dinner.  Yes, it was a little windy (or a lot).  Yes, there were snow flurries.  Yes, the temp had dropped 20 degrees.  No, we didn't process it all and consider driving home that night.  We should have.  We woke up to several inches of snow on the ground and a nice icy coating on the streets.  By the way, did you know that most of Amarillo is one loooooong overpass?  It is.
Here are some pics of our drive home.  Some parts were really scary, as they were near white-out conditions.

Thankfully, The Mister drove all day.  I volunteered, but I warned him it would take a lot longer if I were driving.

I think there were a few times that angels were plastered all around our truck and kept us safe.  Not everyone knows how to drive in this stuff.

By the time we got through Wichita Falls, the roads cleared up and we were able to go a normal speed.

Here's a cute pic of Little Man... sleeping in the car with his mouth open.  I just had to put that one in!

Spring Break

We had a wonderful family vacation over spring break.  We checked the sisters out of school a little early on Friday, packed up the suburban, and headed west.  We stopped overnight in Amarillo, and then kept on driving west.  Needless to say, Little Man is not a fan of driving for hours on end.  But we managed.
The Mister scored on the vacation rental... He found a 3 bedroom townhouse about 20-25 minutes south of the ski resort.  It was perfect!  The sisters shared a room (and it had it's own TV) and Little Man had his own room (all upstairs with a full bath).  We had a large master bedroom downstairs with a king-size bed (we have to have a king... otherwise no one gets any sleep!) and a large master bath.  They even had a garage and a washer/dryer!  We managed to cook all of our evening meals at home and make lunches for the days we skied.
Purgatory (now called Durango Mountain Resort) was wonderful!  I would go back in a heartbeat! There were plenty of green runs (easy) for us to chose from, and even more blue runs (medium difficulty).  The sisters were great skiers!  We had to tell them a time or two (or three or four) to slow down because we couldn't keep up!
Little Man went to childcare the 3.5 days we skied.  He didn't like it much.  But he wasn't horrible for them either.  I think he just tried to tell them who was boss.  Apparently they didn't know that everyone should focus their attention on him!  Imagine!


Here are some pics from our trip:

The sisters and The Mister on the slopes.

The sisters striking a pose... the one in the blue coat is a little crazy!

 A quick pic on the lift.

Little Man has started this new thing...

He raises his arms over his head like he's on a roller coaster.  It's cute... we all say "Yeah W___!"  And he grins from ear to ear.  Here he's doing it with some kitchen utensils toys in his hands.

I'll show you pics from the wild drive home another day.  

February in a nut shell...

So, February came and went before I even realized it!  Here's a few highlights:

• 5 10th grade boys and 2 college-age leaders stayed at our house for a weekend. It actually went better than I had planned.  They ate and drank everything we offered them, but I'm not surprised.  I did have to pick up and wash every single towel in the two bathrooms upstairs.  Again, not surprised.  Good guys, good weekend.
• 13 days (out of 28) this month at least 1 person was sick at our house.  Some of those days, there were 2 or 3 people sick.  I hope that NEVER happens again.  We've had our fair share of sickies... yucky germs, GO AWAY!
• 3, 237 loads of laundry were done... and 2 comforters have been sent to the cleaners... all because of the Month of Sickness.  I think I am still trying to catch up.
• Because I was sick one week for 3 days and still recovering for 2 more, I had to cancel my much-looked-forward-to scrapbooking weekend with a girlfriend.  Her parents have a beautiful lakehouse on Texoma and we go at least once a year to scrapbook all day all weekend.  Totally bummed.
• 2 days cancelled for snow... and we actually had measurable snow!  In fact, one of those days made weather history!  I got some pics; I'll post them another day.
• I did get to go on a overnight trip to Canton with 5 of my girlfriends.  It was fun, but I didn't buy a thing!  But there will be a next time...

So, here we are in March.  We're looking forward to a family ski trip to Colorado over Spring Break.  Should be fun, except we're driving.  Not sure how the Little Man will do in the car for hours on end.  I'm already planning tricks to put up my sleeve.