Last Wednesday afternoon Sam and I decided we should pack the kids up in the minivan and head on down to California. It was a last minute decision because Sam wasn't sure if he'd be working on Black Friday or not. Fortunately he didn't have to, so we made the trip.
We left American Fork (that's where Sam's office is located) at about 6:15pm and drove directly to Claremont. We arrived at about 2:30am Thanksgiving morning. We made pretty good time and had a pretty smooth trip. It was so nice to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Especially since every year my mom goes crazy and makes 8-10 different kind of pies, all homemade. She rocks!
After eating with my family we drove down to Chino to surprise Sam's family. They had no idea that we were in California. This is starting to be a really fun Knecht family game, surprising out of state relatives by showing up on their door steps. It really is the best, give it a try. We got to Casa de Knecht around 4:00pm and sent the boys to knock on the door while we hid by the garage. It was the highlight of the trip to see everyone's shocked expressions. We had just had all of Sam's family here in UT a couple of weeks earlier, except for Lindsay and Rachel. It was especially great to see them. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out there. It was fabulous.
Saturday the boys, several of the boys' aunts, my mom, and I all went to see Tangled. We loved it. It was cute, funny, and not scary. (I'm kind of chicken, I don't do scary.) Then the boys went down to Chino with their aunts while I went shopping.
Sunday morning we left Claremont to drive back to Utah at 5:00am. I don't mess around when it comes to driving home. I like to leave early. We got into St. George at about 10:45 am local time and had to make a stop. The whole weekend Ben had been running a fever, but he was teething and getting in his molars, so I didn't think much of it. By Saturday night he was complaining of immese pain in his ear. By Sunday the pain was unbearable for him. We stopped at an urgent care and sure enough, he has an ear infection. That delay took us about 3 hours. Just before 2:00pm we got back on the road.
The roads driving up past St. George were ridiculous. There was heavy snow, slushy/icy roads, tons of drivers, and too many accidents. After driving for almost 4 hours and only getting to Fillmore we decided to cut our losses and stay at a motel over night. I'm so glad we did. Although I wasn't in my bed last night, we were safe, and we slept well. I've never driven in such poor conditions. And that's saying a lot, because I've lived in Idaho and made it through the worst winter of my life Nov '07- Mar '08.
We finally got to our house around lunch time today. I felt so blessed as we pulled into the driveway in one piece. There were a couple of times driving yesterday that I thought we were not going to make it home alive. Boy am I glad we did. We had such a great time visiting with our family, it made yesterday's drive almost worth it :)
2 comments:
Loved reading about your wonderful surprise visit here...and I agree it is one of the best things you could ever do! Joy and her family surprised me on Mother's Day weekend and I was beside myself with "joy!"
Also, so glad you decided to stop and spend the night somewhere instead of trying to get home and arrived safe. I was disappointed we didn't see you guys at church, but maybe next time!
I love the pop in. we have only managed it once. It was Vicki's b-day and Leila was 3 weeks old. We left her on the porch and rang the door bell. It was fantastic! I'm so sorry about not being able to get together. After the holidays I really want to hang out! No more school yahoo!
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