It all started back in January, Nate and I were discussing our plans for the year, and we decided we should plan some trips and fun things for the year. With Landon in school we now have to look for breaks in the school calendar like everyone else, and the question about what to do during spring break in April came up.
“We should ask my mom and dad about going to Arizona for spring break.” I said. Since they have a house there and flights are usually affordable, we figured it could be a nice little vacation and not break the bank.
I texted mom to drop the “bug” in her ear, and we said we would talk later as it was late evening. We figured we didn’t have to make any concrete decisions until closer to March when we would need to book tickets. Mom and Dad decided that with all the Covid-19 restrictions they would rather drive down, instead of fly.
As we approached the time when we had to decide, my parents talked with my two sisters and they decided that they would go with their families too, but they also planned on driving. I hate road trips, so that wasn’t my plan, but as we went to look for flights, we found that the price for tickets was going to around $3,800, which is outrageous compared to normal. I got the idea to check other airports and found cheap flights to Las Vegas, only $900 for all 4 of us. Las Vegas is a manageable 5 hour drive to Maricopa, AZ instead of 24ish hours from home. We made plans to stay the night before our flight home in Las Vegas to avoid any travel issues going home.
Our travel plans were as follows. Fly from PDX to LAS Sunday April 3, leaving at 6 AM and arriving just after 8 AM. Then we would rent a car and make our way to Maricopa, AZ, where my parents have their house. If it worked out we would stop in at one of Nate’s college buddies homes on the way down through Phoenix. Then on Friday afternoon we would drive back up to Las Vegas and stay the night, our flight was to leave Saturday around 1 PM and we would land in Portland just after 3PM.
Since we were flying Southwest Airlines we needed to check into our flight 24 hours in advance so we could get a boarding group assignment. Since we are flying with children and wanted to make sure we could sit together, we woke up around 6 AM so we could check into the flight. I had been moving the kids' bedtimes earlier so the 3 AM wake-up to get to the airport wouldn’t be so hard, and on Saturday the kids naturally woke up around 6:45 AM.
Nate went up to his parents house to work on the racecar, which was one of his last opportunities to get a lot done before their race in a few weeks. I spent the day doing a deep clean of the house, and finishing packing so we would be ready to go at 3 AM, and we would come home to a clean house.
Nate got home close to 6 PM and we quickly ate dinner and got the kids ready for bed. After putting the kids to bed I finished up cleaning the kitchen and prepping. As 8 PM approached I finally felt I was ready and could go to bed. I sat down to rest my tired feet for a few minutes and looked at my email on my phone and I found an email from Southwest Airlines, it said our flight had been canceled! (only an hour before I was reading it) My reaction was “What?! NATE!”
I had heard on the news earlier that night that Southwest had 179 flights canceled the day before due to a “technical error” but that it had been fixed. When we looked into getting on a different flight, it looked like we couldn’t book a flight until Tuesday, and then we would have to hope that they didn’t cancel that. Southwest ended up canceling 2,000 flights nationwide for Sunday!
“What if we just drove?” I asked Nate (remember I hate road trips) “You mean go to sleep and leave early in the morning?” he replied. “No, what if we left right now?” I had heard on the news that they were expecting snow in the mountain passes the next day sometime and I wasn’t sure when, I also figured the kids would sleep through the night and the long drive would feel shorter if they slept half way. “How crazy would it be if we were the ones who planned this trip, and we were the only ones who didn’t make it?!” I said
First thing we checked to make sure we could cancel our rental car, which luckily didn’t cost us anything. Then officially cancelled our Southwest flight so the credit would go to our account, and then we proceeded to load up the car before waking the kids to pack them into the car.
Now there are a few things I should have learned from my sister Jami who had left on Friday night. Her and her husband were going to drive through the night figuring their kids would sleep … but they didn’t. Also after being in the car for probably 16+ hours her girls started throwing up due to car sickness. I wasn’t so sure that it should take so long to get carsick and thought they must have picked up a bug somewhere, but time would tell.
We added chains and an emergency road kit to the car, some paper towels, wet wipes, and rubber gloves … you never know what you may need, so I tried to be prepared.
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| Loaded and ready to head out. |
We finally had the car loaded up and pulled away from home at 9:15 PM, about an hour after learning of our canceled flight. “I think this is probably the most spontaneous and crazy thing we’ve done!” Nate said as we headed out. We decided to drive down through Nevada taking HWY 26 down to Prineville, Burns, and so on. At first Nate said I could try sleeping, but as I knew we were heading through the mountains and extra eyes for wildlife can be helpful, I couldn’t sleep. We ended up seeing 2 coyotes, 3-4 rabbits, 2-3 deer, and a couple of mice run across the road.
While driving around 1 AM we both saw a shooting star ahead of us in the sky too, which was pretty cool. Also pretty cool was the temperature outside. I believe the lowest we saw was 19 degrees, and when we stopped at rest areas it was very cold, since we were heading to AZ we didn’t bring warm jackets, only sweatshirts. Every time we thought the kids were asleep they would randomly ask a question about something Nate and I were talking about.
At 2 AM Kailey was playing with a little rubber hamburger toy she had won at the Great Wolf Lodge, she was squeezing it against her hand or something and making a “fart” sound, and Landon started asking about constellations. Nate said “I just want to bookmark this in my mind, that at 2 AM we were talking about hamburger farts and constellations!” we all had to laugh.
By about 5 AM both Nate and I were really struggling to stay awake, so I suggested we pull over at the next rest stop and rest our eyes for an hour or so. Sunrise would be around 6, and it would be much easier to keep ourselves awake once the sun was up. Nate agreed, so that’s what we did. After around an hour the car was getting cold, as it was only 20 outside, so we hit the road again.
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| Sunrise at the rest stop. |
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| On the road again! |
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| The bright white dot upper right is Venus I believe. |
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| Breakfast at Burger King |
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| Found some snow in Austin, NV |
The road leaving Austin, NV was very curvy, and Nate was having a little too much fun flying around the corners. I asked him to slow down so I didn’t get car sick, and then Landon started coughing and puked on his lap. Nate quickly got the car stopped and onto a wide spot next to the road, and we got him out of the car, but most of the damage was done at that point. Luckily he mostly got his lap and booster seat. I was able to help him change his pants on the side of the road, and we had wet wipes and paper towels (and gloves) to help clean up the mess. Unfortunately we didn’t have any bags along so I turned Landon’s dirty jeans inside out to contain the mess and washed off his seat cover with water as best as I could. Then I used my nitrile gloves to capture the towels I had used to clean up, containing the mess as best we could.
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| Red dot lower right is where the below picture was taken. Austin, NV upper left. |
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| Car sick! |
As we got back on the road we tried to take it easy, we decided part of the problem was that Landon was reading a book while going on the curvy roads, so we tried to limit his reading to flat, and straight roads. Not long after getting back on the road my older sister Jessica said they were stuck on the side of the road in some town ahead of us (they had left early Saturday.) We were trying to figure out where we were in relation to each other and we discovered that we had missed a turn right past where Landon had thrown up, and we were no longer on the same path. The road we were on added an additional 1 1/4 hours to our trip, but we were at a point where if we turned around that would add even more time, so we just continued on our way. We hoped that they would be able to find the help they needed before we would have been able to get to them, which would have been 4-5 hours anyway. If they didn’t get help by the time we reached Las Vegas, we would hunt down an alternator and/or battery for them and bring it to them.
I gave Nate a break from driving and he was able to sleep for about two 30 min sessions before staying awake Our car is pretty nice most of the time, but there is not much room to stretch out on a road trip. When we stopped for lunch in Ely I also went to a grocery store where I was able to buy some garbage bags, and a small garbage can for a barf bucket, and some Dramamine for if we needed.
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| Cool rock formations. |
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| Pretty road |
Luckily after being broken down for about 3 hours a local tow truck guy was able to help get the Viks on the road. They headed to the Hoover Dam, and by the time they left we were only about 20 minutes behind them. They were heading to John’s boss’s house for the night in Lake Havasu so they split off at Kingman, AZ, and we took the kids to the In and Out for some dinner there. This time we decided to actually eat in the restaurant. I figured it would only add maybe 20 mins to our trip and it would feel good to get out of the car for a while, as butts, backs, and legs were mighty sore by this point.
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| Thanks to the tow truck driver who got the Viks an alternator! |
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| Viks on the road again! |
So most of the trip our kids hadn’t slept, only each taking a couple naps typically no more than an hour long. When the sun finally set they did eventually fall asleep. Nate and I discovered playing 20 questions really helped engage our brains and keep us awake. By the time we were rolling into the Phoenix area we were both on our 3rd, 4th, or 5th winds, and we actually didn’t really feel tired. We finally arrived at Mom and Dad’s house at 9:55 PM. Our 1374.8 miles had taken us 24 hours and 40 min.
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| We have arrived! |
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| Ready for bed! |
We quickly worked on getting the kids ready for bed and settled in for the night. Nate and I finally got to bed close to 11:30 PM. Landon and Kailey were sleeping on a queen blow up mattress to the side of our regular bed. Around 3:30 AM I heard Landon groan and I jumped out of bed (I was on the opposite side of the bed from the kids) . Landon had fallen off the bed and his legs were under our bed. As I helped him get back on the mattress he started coughing and I grabbed his blanket and he started puking into his blanket! Nate jumped up and helped me get him into the bathroom. I took his blanket down to the laundry room and brought him a bucket. He waited patiently as I cleaned up the little that had got on the mattress and got him some clean clothes, and a fresh blanket. He asked if he could go back to bed, and I had him bring the bucket next to the bed. While I was still working on cleaning the bathroom I heard him start puking again. Luckily he had used the bucket. We got him out of bed and I told him to go downstairs. I figured leather couches would be easier to clean if need be than carpet and bedding. Nate sat with him on the couch while I worked on getting some laundry going. Not long after he woke up and puked again, thankfully again in the bucket.
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| Landon slept on the couch with his bucket the rest of the night. |
The first time he threw up (in the car) we were pretty sure it was due to motion sickness, but now we weren’t so sure. I gave Landon a Dramamine, just in case, and Nate went to find a store to get some Gatorade, crackers, and some kind of meds. I stayed with Landon downstairs and listened for Kailey who was still upstairs. At one point I heard her cry out and I went flying upstairs, but it must have just been a dream, as she was still sleeping. Nate finally got home just as the sun was coming up.
Monday Nate and I had an afternoon meeting with a Realtor up in Gilbert, AZ. Nate and I may be moving to Arizona later this year, as he’s in negotiations for a job position that would bring us down there. The housing market is very hot right now, and we wanted to use the trip to get an idea of neighborhoods, drive distances, and so on. I thought Nate was going to need to go without me, but Landon seemed to be feeling better when he woke up in the morning.
As we were washing some more laundry in the morning, Mom’s washing machine broke. The drum wouldn’t spin out the clothes. So Dad and I wrung out the clothes and blankets by hand and put them in the dryer. Then Dad, Nate, and Louie brought the washer into the garage to take it apart and figure out how to fix the problem.
They finally figured out what part was broken and where to get a new one. Nate and I were going to pick one up when we went to see the realtor, but we got going late so Dad just ordered one on Amazon to be there the next day.
After a wrong turn and walking around a complex looking for the Realtor’s office we finally had to call him to ask where his office was. After being there a short while we headed out to look at a few houses. The first house looked pretty nice on the outside, but the key hadn’t been put back in the lock box, so we couldn’t actually see inside. The second house looked nice in the pictures, but inside we could tell it would need a lot of work to make it nice. The carpet was dirty and stained, the walls would need painting as they were rather dirty, and some of the other flooring had some issues too. We were rather disappointed that at the price point we were looking at, some of the houses would need so much work. The third house we looked at we really liked. The downstairs was great and it had an awesome backyard, but it looked like the foundation was crumbling in the front by the garage, and I don’t want to have to deal with that!
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| Crumbling foundation! |
On our way home there was an accident on the 347, which is the highway that brings you to my parents house, so we had to go around, and we didn’t get to the house till close to 7 PM. The Vik’s had arrived closer to 6 PM, and we felt bad as they were waiting for us to get there to have dinner. Nate’s current boss Charlie came down for a visit as he was in town too.
Traffic.
After dinner, Jami, Mom and I went to the store to buy lunch food for the next day. The next morning we were heading to the Phoenix zoo, and we wanted to pack our lunch. By the time I got back from the store all the kids were in bed except for mine (since Nate was visiting, they didn’t get put to bed) so I worked on that. I finally went to bed shortly before midnight, and I was very tired.
We all woke up bright and early to get to the zoo. Our goal was to get to the zoo around the time it opened at 9 AM. As we were packing up the cars to leave, Nate buckled Kailey in and went around the car to get in. Near the driver's side door was my Mom’s agave plant, that she had specifically asked the gardener to trim up before we got there, but hadn’t been done. As Nate tried to go by the tip of the leaf stabbed his leg and blood started gushing down his leg! Frantically I looked in the open trunk and handed him a roll of paper towels and ran into the house to look for Band-Aids. Luckily it was a poke, not a tear, and didn’t require more than a normal Band-Aid, but we had to change his socks and try to clean out his shoe which had quite a bit of blood in it. I found out later that Agave can be toxic and cause rashes and even inflammatory arthritis if you get the juices in/on you. Luckily the part that poked him was a dried sharp tip, so it was more like a needle poke, and didn't break the plant. Dad took care of hacking the Agave back with a machete so it didn’t happen to anyone else.
We met Keith Ankenbauer (my dad's cousin) at the zoo, and we enjoyed spending the day with him too.
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| Me and Keith. |
We had a wheel chair for Jess as she's recovering from a surgery and shouldn't do a lot of walking.
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| Landon & Randy. |
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| Rhino. |
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| Cousins in matching "Cousin Crew 2022" T-shirts I made for them. |
At first it didn't seem like many animals were out and about, but that seems somewhat typical for zoos. At one point mom and I went to the bathroom while the others rested, and on our way back we accidently took a different path where we found elephants and the rhino actually out playing. After we finally met back up with the family, Nate and I paid for the kids to go on Camel rides. At first Landon and Randy didn’t want to go, but after seeing what the ride would be like, they agreed to go. Landon said he thought you had to just sit on top of the camel without a harness and he thought the camel would be running around, not walking slowly being led by a handler. All the kids seemed to enjoy the camel rides
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| Landon & Randy |
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| Peter, Elaina, & Kailey |
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| Emma & Anna |
By that time it was getting pretty hot, and the Phoenix Zoo actually has a few splash pads, so we had the kids take off their shoes and splash in the water a little to cool down.
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| Kailey |
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| Keith & Dad |
After that we ate our lunch in the shade. Lastly we walked past the giraffes and then took the kids to the Merry Go Round, and then to see the Elephant before heading for the gift shop. Luckily it was early enough that traffic wasn't bad yet, and we took the kids to Taco Bell for $1 slushies.
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| Family picture (missing Kyle who stayed in WA) |
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| Cooling down in the pool. |
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| Warm evening visit. |
Wednesday was Randy’s 7th birthday, the kids did some crafts with Grandma and then after lunch we celebrated Randy, Mom, and Peter as their birthdays are all one week apart in that order. After enjoying our brownies and ice cream the kids headed into the pool. My kids didn’t stay long in the pool. I had forgotten their life jackets and they can’t swim, so it requires an adult to help them in the pool. The pool is actually quite deep, so hard to take a kid around as you have to be swimming and treading water too. Plus the pool is only heated with the sun, and my dad’s “redneck” heater, so the water was about 75 degrees, which is pretty cold to my skinny kids.
In the evening we packed into cars again and drove up to Scottsdale to Medieval times. Our family was cheering on the green knight, and he ended up being the overall winner! The kids enjoyed the show pretty well, but neither of my kids ate much of their food. Even calling the chicken “baby dragon” didn’t make it enticing enough!
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| Kailey giving Randy a reading light. |
Thursday morning we had made another appointment with the realtor to see a couple more houses, including the one that was missing the key the first time. Our kids stayed to play with cousins and Nate and I went up to the Chandler, Gilbert area. Afterward Nate showed me where the ASML office was, then we headed back to Maricopa.
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| Dad time in the pool. |
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| Reverse cannon ball. |
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| High five! |
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| Loading up! |
In the morning right before leaving Peter finally threw up, which he said made him feel better. Luckily for him he was a “one and done”. We left and had a short 5 hour trip to Las Vegas.
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| Lunch in Kingman, AZ |
We drove up and down the strip to show the buildings to the kids and then parked at Excalibur, which is a castle themed hotel. We then walked to the Hershey’s and M&Ms stores before heading back down to Excalibur. We knew Mandalay Bay had some kind of aquarium, but we didn’t know if you had to pay for it or not. We should have looked it up, because you did have to pay, and we arrived just a few minutes before they were going to let the last people in for the day. We decided to skip it as we didn’t want to pay almost $30 per person and feel like we had to rush through it, in part because we needed to be getting dinner. So we walked back to our car and drove up to Pepper Lunch, which is a restaurant that Nate loved to eat at in Taiwan. The kids didn’t eat very well, which wasn’t super unexpected, and Nate said the food wasn’t quite as good as he remembered, but he still enjoyed it.
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| Excalibur |
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| Pepper Lunch |
When we got to our hotel we were all very tired. We had all been running on less than normal sleep since we left on our trip and we all got in bed at 8:30 PM. The main problem we had was that we had a room with two double beds, and when you’re used to a King size bed, a double just feels so small. I still woke up feeling pretty good in the morning, despite waking up several times.
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| Viks in Moab |
Friday the Viks and my parents had driven up to Moab on the way home, and Randy threw up as they rolled into town, luckily catching it in the bucket they had bought. The VanderWel’s headed home the way we had come down. At one point they almost ran out of gas, but luckily found a gas station while running on fumes, and poor little Lexi started throwing up at their hotel in Tonopah, luckily Jami was able to catch most of it in their bucket.
The next morning we decided to hit breakfast as we headed out of the far side of Las Vegas, but Landon said he wasn’t hungry. By 9 AM I told him if he didn’t eat his sandwich that he shouldn’t anymore because it may make him sick. So he didn’t eat until we stopped for lunch around 1 PM. I was a little concerned since he wasn’t very hungry still, but we had our bucket, and he said he felt fine. Saturday was our longest drive on the way home. We drove for around 10 hours to Redding, CA. We ate dinner at Applebee’s, and then went to our hotel nearby.
At the Holiday Inn we had queen size beds at least, but they were hard as a rock, so not a great night of sleep. Nate woke up at 4 AM and said he didn’t feel great, but thought maybe it was from eating too much. Around 6 AM I got up to go to the bathroom and I heard Kailey cough and then sound like she was throwing up. I flew out of the bathroom and Nate flew across the bed and grabbed a garbage can. Amazingly nothing had come out, but we brought her into the bathroom. I wasn't sure Landon was out of the woods yet either. I checked my phone and saw that both Annelise, Emmaline had thrown up several times in the middle of the night!
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| Going to be a long day! |
I headed to the nearest Walmart to pick up some disposable diapers, puppy pads for the car seats, a couple more buckets, some Gatorade, gloves, disinfectant wipes, and Kleenex. When I got back I put as much stuff in the trunk as possible to have less targets to hit in the car. Then we got loaded up. Nate decided to drive even though he still wasn’t feeling well. About 20 seconds after pulling out of our hotel parking lot Kailey started crying. I grabbed a bucket and asked her to hold it, which she said she didn’t want to, and while I held it she threw up into it. Nate pulled into a gas station and we got her out. I cleaned up the bucket and bought an extra gallon of water for cleaning along the roadside.
The drive begins!
We headed down the road again, but Nate seemed to be going downhill. When we stopped at a rest area we switched drivers. Shortly down the road Kailey started crying again and we had her hold her bucket. Luckily when she did throw up she caught it again, and there was an exit in just over a mile so I didn’t have to stop along the windy freeway with narrow shoulders.
There were a couple times where I thought for sure Nate might lose it, but he didn’t. Kailey threw up one more time, and after that she fell asleep. I drove for as long as I could before stopping for lunch, but I really had to pee and was getting hungry as we hadn’t eaten breakfast.
The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful, which was a blessing. Nate eventually wanted to drive again, and drove the last couple hours home.
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| Elaina and her trusty bucket. |
Jami and Louie were heading to their house in Prineville where they were going to drop off Louie, but right before they got there Elaina started throwing up (bucket for the win) and had a pretty miserable several hours.
We heard there may be snow in the passes so we wanted to get through before that. For that reason Jami decided to try to make it home too after Elaina seemed stable.
We finally pulled into our house at 3:58 PM. I quickly went about unloading the car and then decided to head to the grocery store to get some stuff to make chicken noodle soup. I was worried I may get sick overnight and I wanted there to be some food in the house.
Nate fell asleep in the chair while trying to watch the F1 qualifying rerun while I made my soup. When my soup was done I ate some dinner and got the kids to bed. I wasn’t sure if we were out of the woods yet, so I had each kid sleep with a bucket next to their bed. I notified the school that Landon would be out sick as I wanted to make sure we were passed this, and then I crawled into bed… it sure felt nice.
In the morning I woke up and looked at my phone. School was canceled due to bad weather! I jumped out of bed and looked outside… we had 5” of snow! I wasn’t expecting that in almost mid April. Luckily this morning the kids seem fine, and Nate is feeling better too! So far I’m feeling okay, and I hope it stays that way. We also were without electricity when we first woke up, but it came on within about 30 mins of us waking up.
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| Morning surprise! |
Jami also thankfully made it home safe Sunday night. The Viks and my parents had stayed in Baker’s City Sunday night, and had a dicey morning drive home Monday. At one point the roads went from dry to slushy and the traffic slowed way down. My Dad looked into the rear view mirror and told my mom something to the effect of “this isn’t going to be good!” A semi truck was coming flying up behind them, he had to hit the shoulder of the freeway to avoid creaming them, and flew past several vehicles while on the shoulder before continuing to fly along the highway! Mom said he was carrying a heavy load of steel beams. Luckily that was the worst part of their drive, and thankfully they made it home Monday afternoon.
Tuesday evening, shortly after putting Kailey to bed she threw up all over herself, proving that this is the stomach bug that just keeps on “giving”. I sure hope we are all on the mend soon… I feel like I could use a vacation!
This trip was one for the record books! Glad we still had fun, and thankful we all made it home safe, but hope to not have another trip like it!
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