On the road to St. George!!!

A few months ago, Telisa sent a mass email out to all of us stating that Clay was getting a week off of work and would love a family vacation in St. George! The entire Peters' clan was invited, so we all scurried around trying to rearrange our schedules to accommodate such a delightful idea. As luck would have it, on the exact date of Clay, Telisa, Bodie and Tatum's arrival (November 21, 2010- WHITLEY'S BIRTHDAY), a huge snow storm decided to descend on Utah. The VanLeeuwen's plane was to land around 5pm. Dennis volunteered to pick them up at the airport and head straight to St. George with a Traffic App on his cell phone. Most of the Daddies stayed home, but the brave Mommies filled their cars with kids, snacks, movies and games to make the journey on their own Sunday around 2 pm. Kim and kids decided to leave bright and early Monday morning so they could celebrate Whitley's birthday properly. Tiffany and Tristen's cars led the pack. Tara asked me to ride with her to help with her newborn Indy, which I happily obliged. The roads were a little dicey through Springville to Salem, but then things seem to look bright up ahead! Then we received a phone call from Tiff reporting that there was an accident involving 4 semi trucks that had jack knifed and had blocked the roads. Basically, we were all stopped for about 3 hours. As the snow began to fall harder and the temperatures drop, we were getting a little nervous. Everyone had to go the bathroom and we were starving! Tiffany and Tristen's cars finally made it out of the bottleneck, but just as Tara's car was starting to make it's way up a black iced road, her car broke down, with us in very precarious situation. I called 911 and asked the kids to start praying that no one would hit us, because we were dark and stopped in the road. There was some hollowing for "DADDY at that point!" The Sheriff showed up and tried to jump start our car, but we quickly discovered it wasn't the battery. He told us we needed to be towed, but all the tow trucks were working overtime, so we would have to wait at least another hour. Super fun! By now Tiffany and Tristen were in Beaver waiting for us. Dennis, Clay and Telisa had nearly caught up to us, but because of the information on his phone, he got off the main road and took a dirt road avoided the giant traffic jam. When the tow truck came, I imagined we would be taken to Beaver where we could rent a car. I was quickly informed that there were no Rental Cars in Beaver, all the Hotels were booked and the car would take 3 to 4 days to repair! The mechanic said, we might be able to open a church for you. Thankfully the rest of our group made it safely to Beaver and instead of listening to me and going onto St. George, they all waited and rearranged their cars so they could fit the six of us in their vehicles. We were so grateful for greasy gas station food and a fairly clean restroom, but mostly for our family that waited for us and managed to get us all the way to St. George by midnight. Kim drove up the next morning and got all the things out of Tara's car that we just couldn't manage to fit!!

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, but super fun for me. We had 20 kids under one roof during the day and used two houses to sleep in at night. We mostly crafted, ate, laughed, broke up squabbles between siblings, watched movies and crafted some more. The grandkids did a service project for all the residents of Grandpa Harold's place. When we drove that patch of road back home on Wednesday, I had a big smile on my face!