The rest of the story

Last night I said I would tell the rest of the story after getting some sleep.

What started out as a quick trip to a neighboring town to meet my mom turned into something much bigger. The weather is funky weird here with lots of snow (for us) that has lasted for most of the week. Finally yesterday the temperature stayed above freezing all day so the roads were good and the girls went to school for the first time all week. Turns out it will be the only time this week as school was called off due to a pending storm.

Mom and I talked about it after I got the email from school saying they were canceling for today. Mom and DD#1 are working on a project together that will be DD's gift to her dad. She needed to get to Mom's to finish it. Originally we thought about having my hubby take her to work with him this morning and Mom would meet them there but we got nervous about the freezing weather predicted. We decided to go last night and I decided to do double duty by picking up a couple more Christmas gifts.

We headed out about 5:15 or so to pick up hubby so he could distract a couple of the kids while I bought something for them. The temps had started to drop and a bit of snow had started to fall when we headed out and I almost turned around to call the whole thing off but I didn't. It took quite a long time to get to hubby's work but we made it. It snowed most of the way but was just ice in the town he works in. We proceeded on to the neighboring town where we were meeting Mom. Got there no problem, dropped off DD, picked up the gifts we needed and then made the fateful decision. We decided to go get dinner instead of just going through the drive through and going home because the snow had stopped and things looked quiet.

By the time we were done eating some yummy Chinese food the snow had started again with a vengeance! But we were still able to travel without putting on chains or anything. So we started the slower than normal but still safe ride home until we came around a particularly bad corner to find flares burning ahead of us. We quickly came to a halt on the banked corner to wait while the police finished cleaning up an accident. Unfortunately it turned out that we were not going any further without chains. So hubby got the chains out and proceeded to get them put on pretty easily but they were to big and required a bunch of futzing and adjusting to get them "just right". Unfortunately that left a tail that banged on the inside of the wheel well so we had to drive at about 10 miles per hour to avoid doing damage. Consequently a trip that normally takes about 30 minutes or less took 3 or more times that hence why we finally pulled in the driveway at just before midnight.

And that is whole sad tale.

We currently have 3.5 inches of new snow on the ground and I am NOT going anywhere today.