Our plan for Valentine's Day

Sunday is Valentine's Day. A day filled with flowers, candle lit dinners, and chocolate candy. So, what romantic thing are y'all doing out there?

I don't want to brag about our plans, but...how is this for a Valentine's Day?




That's right! We're going to the Daytona 500 in Florida! It's the biggest race in all of NASCAR. Think of it as the Super Bowl.


I can't wait to see all the quality people there (actual pics from Datyona above). It should be a very entertaining time and hopefully Dale Jr. will finish in the top 10. Now that would make quite a Valentine's Day!

What a good nap can do to you

Check out Holton's hair after a recent nap...




And here is our sweet little guy after spending some quality time on his hair.

The conclusion of stranded

So Christmas Eve we were just trying to safely get home for Christmas morning. But as we got closer to Wichita Falls, the roads were terrible. They were covered with ice.

We were driving about 20 MPH while cars and trucks were spinning out left and right. It was beyond stressful as we had Holton with us. As it got darker, the situation got so much worse. We eventually came to a complete stop on HWY 287 about 50 miles out of Wichita Falls. It was about 10 PM Christmas Eve when we realized, we are truly going to spend the night in our car stranded on this road.

The only way we got any information that night was from Twitter. I searched for Wichita Falls, 287 etc and found that people had been on that stretch of Highway for 13 hours! Here is one guy I found on Twitter. We laughed and laughed about his updates.

Since there was no sign of help, no TXDOT, no Sheriff, no snow plow, nothing at all we called DPS for some info. They verified that since the roads were so icy that it was causing semi trucks to jack knife and basically block the road. By the time they got help out there to move the trucks, another would jack knife. Bottom line - they should have shut down the HWY and worked with us all to get moving. But, we never ever saw any help.

We were very lucky that we had gas as that allowed us to run the heater in both cars all night long. We also had food and water, so we were one of the lucky ones. Countless people ran out of gas or had to shut off their engines to conserve their gas....talk about cold!

So Christmas morning arrives and we're thinking, now we'll get some results. Now we'll see help and we'll get off this horrible road. Here are pics from that morning.








That morning Patrick tracked our mileage. In a 3 hour span, we went 1.8 miles! But finally that afternoon around 1:00 the traffic started to ever so slowly move.



We decided since there roads were still bad & we were exhausted, we were going to stay in Wichita Falls. At 2:00 Christmas Day we checked into the Courtyard.

I can tell you I've never ever been so happy to be in a hotel in my life! After 31 hours in a car, it was like heaven to know that we'd have a bathroom, a bed and real food. (Well, bar food, we had nachos, wings, etc. for Christmas Dinner!) So we spent Christmas night with other families who were stranded.



Typically, it takes 11 hours to get from Albuquerque to Dallas. It took us 31 just to get from Albq. to Wichita Falls! But the day after Christmas, we were finally able to head home to Dallas. Have you ever seen a happier group of people while eating at Denny's? LOL - we chowed down that morning.

Part 1: Stranded

Our main goal for Christmas was to be at home so that Holton could get enjoy the whole process of waking up, going down stairs and seeing everything that Santa left him.

That was our mission when we started the trip back home. Little did we know, we'd all end up spending Christmas Eve and Christmas day in our car. Our traveling party included Adam, Holton, me, Mom and Dad, and Patrick and Amanda.

The roads weren't exactly picture perfect when we left Colorado, but we made pretty good time all things considered.



Obviously it's a long drive from CO to TX, so we spent the night in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We all had a good night sleep and we headed out on Christmas Eve with the plan for us to be in Dallas around 7 PM.

Once we got further south, the roads started to get worse. Friends & family in Dallas were telling us about the snow and ice they were experiencing. Well, here is some of what we saw on our journey.


We also hit a major stand still somewhere in NM. It was terrible. We were stuck for so long that Amanda got out when to ask the truckers what they knew. LOL - this is the pic I took of her coming back to our truck.

And here we are so relieved and happy to finally be moving again. Oh boy, was that short lived.

Once we hit Texas, things got more and more dicey.




We took the drive slow and easy still hoping to make it home on Christmas Eve. We even adjusted our ETA to a more reasonable 12AM, but we were still planning on making it home. Not so much...

Real Colorado Snow!

While in Colorado for my Grandma's funeral, we were able to stay in Grand Junction where my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jim live. They have a beautiful home! Just check out the view from the porch. And, they happen to live on one of "those streets" for the Christmas lights. You know, the kind where tons of people drive by very slowly to check out all the homes & lights? That's the deal here.

It's actually a requirement that they have Christmas lights up & they will even come to your door if any section of lights have been out for more than five minutes (this happened while we were there!)

So in Dallas, we never have large amounts of snow. We may have some "snow" in the morning, but by noon, it's always melted away. To be in Colorado with tons of snow was such a treat for Holton. He even made a snow angel.

So bare with me as I include several snow pics since we may never see this again! Love this one. Notice my cousin Timmy isn't even wearing a coat to sweep in the snow. Us Texans were feeling pretty wimpy next to this tough guy. And finally, I'll leave you with some video of Holton playing in the snow.

Again, I must document this for Holton so he can look back and remember what real snow actually looks like!