on the snowy road

December 29th we drove to Elk River for a Christmas gathering with Jan's side of the family.  The girls called this "the party with Grandma and all her sisters".  Grandma and her sisters like big families, which means big parties :)  [Grandma Claudine, Matt's mom's mom, was the matriarch of this clan, and Lydia was her 23rd great-grandchild.  She died shortly after Lydia was born, but the family just keeps growing :)]  It is always a treat to be with these folks!

Photos from the actual event are on another camera, so I'll come back and post some later.  We left the morning of the 30th, knowing a blizzard was forecasted for later in the day.  Sure enough, it started snowing at lunch time, and the afternoon drive got pretty hairy.

This was my view from the passenger window.  White, white and more white.  Snow falling and snow blowing, everywhere. 

The interstate was already closed west of Fargo and the eastern portion closed right after we arrived at our destination.  Oh man were we glad to be inside a warm home, full of food and family! 

The next morning the snow stopped falling and the kids went outside, for about thirty seven seconds.  Actually, Julianna was out much longer than I thought she'd stay.... It didn't help that I hadn't planned on being snowed in - a (lucky) packing mishap meant that we had their snow bibs in the car, but their boots were MIA.  Uh oh.  It was SOOOOO cold.  As in temperatures barely above ZERO.  When the forecasted high is 2 degrees, you can be sure of at least one thing, and that is that the snow that blew inside your car the previous evening will not be melting any time soon :)

A second snowstorm showed up a few hours later, and there was no way we could return home as scheduled.   The interstates remained closed, our stay lengthened, and our children were delighted to be there.  It was so much fun I found myself thinking "this should have been the plan all along".

We finally gave up waiting for the interstate to re-open and decided to try another route.  The initial miles were no fun, but the road cleared, the stress level fell, and we arrived home safe and sound.

But, honestly, a bit frazzled.  Not so much by the weather, but by the delay.  We were scheduled to move out of our home by noon Saturday (another family arriving from Turkey overlapped with our time in the US and we were anxious to let them move in and settle, while we finish our time here living at Matt's parents).  Anyways, not only were we not moved out Saturday noon, we were still stuck out of town with closed interstates!  Aggghhhh!  Good news is, the newly arriving family was stuck too :)

So we got back to town, ate some dinner, got our kids in bed at Grandma's, and went over to begin the packing frenzy. Thank goodness I had done some preliminary work last week while Matt was ice fishing!

We finished, thanks to a late night and huge help from some friends who came over Sunday afternoon to lend a hand. 

With hearts full of mixed emotions we said goodbye to this sweet house we have called home these past six months.  I miss this house already :)

Goodbye Chestnut Street, Asia here we come!