Holiday Travels

The start of the holiday season found us once again stuffing all of our earthly possessions into the bed of the truck and hitting the road for Idaho. We spent two and a half weeks between Andrea's parents and mine and enjoyed our much-needed break immensely.

It rained on Thursday night and coated the world outside with a fine layer of ice. Fortunately the roads had pretty much melted by the time we got going on Friday afternoon so we made pretty good time through Iowa and into Nebraska. Here's the view off our back deck on Friday morning.

Friday night found us in Lincoln, Nebraska and Saturday dawned cold and windy. We drove for about 16 hours that day, wanting to get to Andrea's folks' place that night. Winter can be a tricky time of year to cross Wyoming, but we got through with only a couple of challenges. I was glad to be driving the truck.

Paxton did well for his first long road trip. He slept, watched his brothers, threw Cheerios at the back of daddy's head, and worked his way through his bag of toys. And between that and a couple of bouts of let-me-out-of-this-seat-right-now-or-I'll-surely-explode fits of desperation, he played peek-a-boo. Boo!Anyway we made it to Andrea's folks place and were relatively coherent on Sunday. Andrea's cousin Melinda and her husband Keith stopped by for the afternoon with their two boys. It was nice to see them again.

The boys with their second cousins.It snowed pretty much the whole week of Christmas at Steve and Joanne's, so we cranked up the fireplace and drank coffee and watched the kids play.

Steve's tractor got a workout too. Kenrick spent a lot of time with the sled on the hill behind the house.
And learned how to set up domino blocks into all sorts of crazy patterns. There they go!We headed a little further west to my folks place for the week of New Year's, where we enjoyed spending some time with my brother and his family and seeing both of Andrea's brothers and their families a couple of times.

Mia enjoys getting to know her cousin. Paxton enjoys his bottle.Everyone came to Mom and Dad's on Saturday to help Paxton celebrate his first birthday (more on that later). It was really nice to have everyone there, although Paxton seemed a bit oblivious to the whole birthday thing.

The boys with all but one of their first cousins.We did get to see Tristan later that weekend, which means that the only relatives we missed on this trip were Sally and Matt. They are currently off on some wild adventure to parts unknown, but we know they would have loved to have been there.

On Monday morning we packed up the truck again and pointed her east. Then we waited in traffic. And waited. While it snowed. It took us about two hours to get out of Boise, mainly because of traffic. The four inches of new snow didn't help either, and the weather never really let up all the way across Idaho and into Utah. By the time we got to Wyoming the snow had finally stopped and the roads were decent, but we were about five hours behind schedule and tired of driving. Except Kenrick.
We stopped early, ordered pizza, and went for a swim.
Tuesday and Wednesday were much better travel days and we made good time, but it still took us about 31 hours total to get back.

We had a great trip, one that the kids will remember for a lifetime, but it's sure good to be home.