Change of plans

We were looking forward to visiting a cousin of mine for the New Year. We randomly bumped into each other at Stake Conference a few months ago and decided to make a holiday visit to get reaquianted. She lives about a half hour past Nauvoo, totaling our trip to be approx. 2 1/2 hours. With our luck, it was snowing all morning! We were determined to go since we kept putting off the trip. Plus we were looking forward to actually doing something besides staying at home for our holiday break.

We had to drive pretty slow.... 45 mph instead of the usual 65 mph. There are like no major freeways in site, so we have to travel the "back roads" all the time. I miss not being able to go 75 mph at all! The roads were snowy, but the plows were out. Tyler was really driving cautious, but to our dismay, the snow got the better of us and we spun a 180 onto the shoulder. "OK, not a big deal," I thought. It got our blood pumping a little bit faster, but we kept driving like nothing happened. Within 10 minutes, we started spinning again. This time there was a lot of oncoming traffic and a semi that was riding our tail behind us. Because of Tyler's teenage experience of flipping brodees in parking lots, he was able to maneuver the car onto the shoulder again. No cars, and luckily the diesel, didn't hit us. We were so close to hitting a pole though. Some friendly passerbys helped us get out and we decided we had enough!

Sorry my dear cousin... We just wanted to go home and be safe and not worry about driving anymore in this freezing cold mid-west weather. We went 35mph the whole home, taking us over 2 hours to get home (double the time as normal). We had been in the car all afternoon
and wasted a tank of gas. While Tyler was driving, I kept my mind on the new book I got for Christmas... TWILIGHT. Yes.... I am hooked like so many of you out there. Tyler would every so often ask what was going on. I would give him a quick synopsis of the latest chapters but I finally said, "Why don't I just read it outloud." With only 30 minutes left of the trip, I read the book. It was enough to get him hooked. He said, "Let's go home and read the rest of it!" So we put the kids to bed, and read together. We finished the book just in time to wish each other a Happy New Years!