Spring Break 2010 - Part 1

As a tradition the past few years, my sister in law and I spent the week together with the kids. Normally we would visit the Abilene, TX Zoo and do a ton of other super fun stuff! This year we spent it together again. Only, because we will both be moving this summer, we decided to spend this last spring break on the road. We decided to end this current station with a BANG! And a BANG it was!!!

First, we went and spent the day in Fort Worth. Krys's baby sister got married (such a beautiful bride)! I only got a few shots from the reception. (Bad pics...sorry. Had only my phone in there). #4 LOVED dancing with the groom and when she held the Bride's bouquet, she turned into Princess E!

We all were SO exhausted that night, even though we got a 4 hour start on our road trip, we needed a place to stop for the night. Can't even remember the name of the place!

It was a good thing we stopped! We needed to be well rested! Little did we know why! We found ourselves driving through OK, back through the panhandle of TX, and then into NM. Oh NM...we have a love hate relationship. After this trip, I would say more hate than love! 

We unexpectedly hit snow! Not too bad, the kids thought it was beautiful. If we had only known that this was just the beginning.

Are you noticing the trend????   The snow ended up getting so bad, that Krys stopped taking pictures. You wouldn't have seen anything other than white. Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE snow! I don't mind driving in the snow. But, add heavy snow, very gusty wind, and conditions making it virtually impossible to see the person ahead of you (other than their rear lights)...NOT my idea of fun!  We saw college kids who, later to find out on the Albuquerque news, barely escaped death after someone plowed into their vehicle which had already spun out into the center median (their tow truck JUST showed up as we passed them). We saw plenty other scary things as well. 

Seriously, in blizzard conditions, 4 wheel drive, isn't going to help you. So just slow down and take it easy! I'm just saying!

Needless to say, the nerves were fried. We promptly found someplace to stay for the night. It was only around 4ish! After finding a great McDonalds play place, we felt much better and were able to sleep that night, so we thought. Bub, even enjoyed his 1st. chocolate chip cookie!

See the snow on my car, before we ate dinner and let the kids tire themselves out? At least an hour AFTER getting out of the storm! There was a lot more up top plastered to my cargo thingy-ma-bobber!

After a restless night with the baby, and my 2 girls in Krys's room being sick all night, we stopped across the street at the Walgreens and then got back on the road! Everything was smooth sailing from then until our stop in St. George. And everyone felt much better as the day went on!

Along our path we were able to go over the Hoover Dam! Would have been much funner to go during daylight hours. Maybe next time! Some pics from waiting to go over the dam. Took us about 2 hours!

We saw a BEAUTIFUL sunset that evening!

Here are some other sites we saw!

Hmmmmm...you think???

You can't see how much traffic was stopped ahead of us! Or behind us for that matter!

WooHoo! The speed limit says 55!!!!!! Guess what we were going????

Can you tell the kids were super impressed????

Just when you think we were going to go no where...we see this

And how fast does that translate too???

It was a lot of fun! This part of the trip! I'm more than certain the people around us thought that we were crazy lunatic Spring Breakers! I used my good camera, so there were flashes, and loud laughter, kids singing kid songs as loud as possible, the whole fun nine yards! We were even scared to death, when a group of 3 younger adults came running aside my vehicle! Holy Moses, are they lucky nothing was in reach! (Yes, that means that we were traveling armed.) No idea how far back they started, but we know they made it to the top, just to turn around and run back to their car!