Christmas Fun with Grandma and Grandpa

This year we were expecting to spend Christmas with just our little family since we'd recently had both sets of Grandparents come to our house for Ashley's baptism. Well, with the new job offer, Jeff and I needed to go house hunting and the only time that seemed logical was right after Christmas since he didn't have to start work until Jan 4th. Due to this new situation, we arranged for my parents to use the airplane tickets we were offered for the house hunting trip so that we could drive Jeff's things to Utah and have more than just a couple days to look for a house. It was fun that it happened to be this time of year because we were able to have them here for Christmas. They got to watch the kids wake up Christmas morning all excited, and observe the pandemonium of present opening. They also experienced an added treat of seeing what fun Kansas snow storms are like. It took Jeff four hours to get my parents from the airport, and they counted 29 cars off the road on their way to our house. On Christmas Eve, we had quite a snow storm which was apparently the worst in fourteen years. The snow here is not fun like in Utah, because it's dry pellet snow that blows around everywhere leaving three or four foot drifts in some places, and nothing in others. Apparently our driveway is the catch-all for the snow on our street as well. Our neighbors had a clean driveway while we had two feet of snow - lucky us. Anyway, Jeff and Taylor had fun shoveling on Christmas and it wasn't too cold at that time so the kids could play in the snow a little. The next day, Jeff and I had quite the adventure trying to get to Utah. It took us 30 minutes at 5:30 am to just get to the gas station in Topeka because we kept running into drifts that blocked our way. We finally did get on the road only to find it closed right before Colorado. Jeff did not want to stop, so we pioneered a new route through back roads going North into Nebraska. We then dropped down into Colorado to avoid one area of bad weather in Wyoming, but went back up to Cheyenne and drove west from there. By 10:15 that night we reached Rawlings, WY and I hit the wall. I couldn't stand being in the car anymore. We stayed the night there, which was great, and then had a nice drive the next day. It was an adventure, but we were grateful that our kids were safe at home with my parents. Having the week to look for houses on our own really helped. We feel lucky to have such great parents on both sides of the family.