Tassie's Christmas Adventure...Day 1 and 2

Howdy folks!

Welcome to Christmas vacation! Woo Hoo!!! I'm hoping that being done with my master's courses (yay me!) will allow more time for more regular updating of my blog. Let's hope so!


So...let me get everyone up to speed on the background of my Christmas excursion this year. My husband's sister is married to my brother...brother/sister married brother/sister. It makes holidays very easy. We don't have to split up Thanksgivings or Christmases....we just have one large one together....except.....

My brother and his family live in Denver, and we live in Starkville. That's about 1,000 miles. Not an easy trip. A few years ago, we started alternating who went where for Christmas. For the last time or two, we've not gone to Denver. Stuff has gotten in the way. Mostly our classes and lack of money because of said classes. Now that we're both done, that is no longer an issue. So.....my parents, my nephew (my brother's son), David, Raelynn, and I are traveling cross country to spend time with the Denver fam.


We don't all fit in the same car due to all of the stuff that has to be moved. My nephew has been living at my parents' house for the last year and now we are moving him back to Denver. So we are caravanning. My parents and Christian went ahead of us yesterday and drove from Starkville to Fort Smith, Arkansas. We didn't go that far. We stopped in Helena, Arkansas and spent the night with David's Aunt James Helen. (Yes, that's her name....we've decided to call her "Aunt Sissy" for Raelynn. Aunt James Helen doesn't roll easily off the tongue.) We had a nice visit with her and then left her house on our way to Wichita, Kansas. My parents and Christian got here in the early afternoon. We had further to drive so we didn't get in until 6 or so. It didn't help that we spent 45 minutes driving in circles around Tulsa. Apparently, someone is having a grand time spending money on construction in Tulsa. The GPS system we borrowed from my dad (fondly dubbed "Dummy") didn't account for the detours. Neither did we. We kept trying to get on to the correct road but each ramp on to the freeway was blocked. David and his keen sense of direction got us out of Tulsa and we didn't have to stop for directions.


So, for other random stuff:

Yesterday, we ate at Aunt Sissy's house. She made homemade soup and bread. She doesn't have a TV, so David and Aunt Sissy played two games of Scrabble. I went to bed at 8:30. For breakfast, she made homemade biscuits and sausage patties. Yum.

For lunch, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel. I love this place. Whoever thought of this place was a genius. Shopping AND dinner? You gotta love it! I had a meatloaf sandwich and a salad. It was good.

For dinner, my parents, David, Raelynn, and I went to the McDonald's next to the hotel. (Christian didn't feel well so he didn't go.) Raelynn got to play in the large play area with some girls. I think this made up for the fact that the hotel's "indoor" pool is actually outdoors and we didn't get to swim. We made it back to the hotel where I watched The Biggest Loser-Where Are They Now? episode. Fun. I'm also taking advantage of the high speed wireless service at the hotel. Have I mentioned how much I hate STUPID dial up at home?


So tomorrow we're expected to drive right through a winter snow storm all the way to Denver. The high tomorrow in Denver is expected to be 23 degrees. But don't worry, it's a dry cold. That's what my brother always says in defense of living in Denver. He also says that everything is 15 minutes away in Denver. What he doesn't say is that Denver is full of crazy drivers that go very fast. Not something I enjoy.

So anyway, David is torn about the snow storm. On one hand, he bought snow chains for the truck in anticipation of a snow storm. Part of him doesn't want to drive in it, and the other part wants to try out the chains. Which part of him will prevail?


Tune in tomorrow to find out the answer and to learn more useless and random information about my Christmas Adventure.