This last week we got to go to Utah to enjoy Thanksgiving with both of our families, the original plan was to leave Seattle on Wednesday, but because of the whopping 4 inches of snow that Seattle got on Monday Richard's school was cancelled on Tuesday so we decided to leave late Tuesday morning. The weather wasn't great, so we only made it to Pendleton, OR...about 1/3 of the way. So we stayed the night in a hotel and got up bright and early for the second part of our drive on Wednesday, again the roads were not great, but we rolled into Spanish Fork at about 6:00.
Thursday we had Thanksgiving with my family at 12:30 and then we went to a second Thanksgiving dinner with Richard's family at about 3:00. Both of our Thanksgivings were spectacular!
Friday, Richard went skiing with a bunch of the boys in his family, I took the day easy with my family. I went shopping with my mom and brothers and just had a nice relaxing day.
Saturday, we went to Grandma Christensen's to have Christmas morning with Richard's parents then we went to my house to watch the BYU vs Utah football game, which we lost. :(
Saturday night brought the real reason for our trip to Utah, the most important part. It was Grandma Christensen's 80th birthday party. Almost her entire family came to Utah to be a part of the event, only four of her grandchildren weren't able to make it. She had family from all corners of the country: New Hampshire, Georgia, Washington, Arizona, and many others. It was a fantastic night and it was so great to honor grandma and see her life in pictures. We love you grandma, happy birthday!
Unfortunately, on Sunday we had to drive back to Seattle. We woke up at 3:15 Washington time and picked up Richard's dad and sister from Grandma's house to take them to the airport and then we were on our way. Just a mere 3 hours into our drive we hit the first snag...we learned that I-84 was closed at the Utah/Idaho border so we pulled off the freeway to discuss what we wanted to do...our options were sit there, go back to spanish fork, or go all the way around I-84 through Pocatello which, at the speed limit would add 2 hours to our drive. We decided that we would just be annoyed all day if we weren't making progress so we decided to go ahead and take the 2 hour detour, but before we got back on the road we wanted breakfast, but NOTHING was open, so we ended up finding a walmart and buying some pop-tarts and graham crackers.
The roads were pretty nasty until about 100 miles from Boise so it was a LONG drive, the normal 6 hour drive to Boise took TEN hours!!!! After that, the drive was fairly smooth, we were going to stop in Kennewick for the night, but we really didn't want to and we were feeling good so we were able to make it all the way home. We got in at about 10:30, which isn't that late except that we had been awake since 3:15...
18.5 HOURS LATER WE HAD FINALLY MADE IT HOME!
But the trip was totally worth it and we would do it all again!
