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Ringing in the New Year

Happy 2011! I was going to do an end-of-year wrap-up, but I haven't had the chance to sit down and think about it. It may be coming... one of these days.

Steve and I spent New Year's Eve with friends in Santa Barbara celebrating Danny's 30th birthday (which was a few days earlier). It was low-key fun and filled with delicious food and excellent company.

We left Saturday morning (a little later than we'd planned) for Fresno to visit Steve's family and his grandparents, who were in town from Texas. The drive was easy-peasy, and we made the trip in less than four hours. We had a very nice visit! There was a lot of good conversation, more fantastic food, and I think we both wished we could have stayed longer.

After our drive back home, we really wished we could have stayed longer!

Something we realized near the end of our trip:

Travel time to and from the airport: 1.5 hours
Time spent getting through security, waiting at the gate, and at baggage claim: 2.5 hours
Time spent on an airplane: 4 hours
Total time spent traveling two thousand miles between my parents' house in Chicago and our house: about 8 hours

Time spent traveling two HUNDRED miles (a 3.5-4 hour trip, usually) between Steve's parents' house and ours when it is snowing, the Grapevine is closed, and the detour route is covered in snow and slush and California drivers who can't drive in snow: more than 8 hours

It was charming for a while. We left Fresno at 1:30 and adjusted our original estimated 5:00 arrival home to 6:30 because of the detour. We were enjoying snow-covered mountains and flurries. It was beautiful! Steve joked that he hoped we were home by 10:00. Haha.

Pretty!  For now...

Detour!

Past Tehachapi

Snow in CA

(All pictures were taken before it started getting bad.)

Then it started getting backed up for no reason. Then (two hours later) it started getting backed up because there were no snow plows and no salt or sand and there was black ice and people don't know how to drive in snow, and it was scary.

We were home by 10:00, but not by much.

All in all, we spent more waking hours in the car than we did visiting Steve's family this weekend. :(

And today is a snow day for all the communities we drove through last night. Crazy!

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