A Change of Plans and a Pit stop in LV

Hmmm... not sure how to sum this story up. On Friday, the 21st, we packed up all of our stuff into the Civic and got on the road to drive to Washington to spend Christmas with my family. I had been nervous about the road conditions of the mountain passes and so I'd been watching the weather all week. We knew there was a good chance it wouldn't be good. But all day it said that it was snowing and you'd need chains, but the passes in northern CA and southern OR were open. So after picking Eric up from work I told him to check the pass conditions to see if it was better to push through tonight or stop short and tackle them in the daylight. We were about 7 or 8 hours from the mountains. Anyway, we found out that the I-5 at the Mt. Shasta pass was closed for about 40 miles. Also, we found out that they were expecting 3-4 more feet of snow in the next 2 days, so we didn't know when the passes would reopen. Our trip on good roads was already going to be 18 hours. We had bald tires and had yet to buy chains. We have no winter coats, gloves or boots. We tried to see if there would be a better route through Reno and up but the Sierra Nevadas were also expecting major snow and was a lot longer route. We tried to see if there were any Amtrak tickets available to get us up to Portland and then take a rental car from there, but they were sold out. So, because of the uncertainties of the situation, we very reluctantly gave up and turned around about an hour into our trip. We were all devastated. The kids and I cried the whole way back to our house. Seriously, I don't know if I'd ever been more sad. We pulled into our driveway and just sat there. I couldn't bring myself to go inside. The whole time we'd been communicating with my mom, who said if you can't come this way, you should try to go to UT to spend time with Eric's family. So, we checked the road conditions to UT, which were clear, and called Eric's parents to see if we could head their way. After we got the ok, we went inside our house for a potty break and then headed back out onto the road. We drove all the way to Las Vegas, getting to the Luxor, where we would be staying, at 2 am. The next day we hung around town checking out our two favorite hotels, Bellagio and Venetian, before heading to St. George where we would meet Eric's parents at his grandfather's house.

Don't judge our appearances in these photos. We did not shower or change our clothes from the day before, our trunk was jam packed and so we didn't want to pull everything out to find clothes.