Last week we finally decided it was time to come home. Our trip to Utah for a "couple of weeks" had turned into almost a month and a half. To make a very long story short; Andrew didn't get his surgery. Insurance denied the claim (however they didn't bother to inform us of this until Andrew was literally boarding his plane to fly to Utah for the surgery... which was supposed to be the next day). His Doctor is pretty ticked and is currently fighting our insurance company. We decided to wait it out for a while to see if things would go through so Andrew could come back while we were still there. Needless to say it hasn't gone through and our family needed to be together again and so at 5:30 on Weds morning we jumped in the car with Papa and headed home.
We knew there was a bit of a storm we would have to make it through in northern Utah/SW Wyoming. It really wasn't bad. We were pulling a trailer so going was a little slower than usual but no big deal. We made it to Rawlings and decided to stop for lunch and let the kids/dogs (we brought Hunter home!) stretch and run.
30 minutes later we were back on the road and headed into the depths of hell...
I was trying not to hate Wyoming. I really was. On the drive out to Utah I was even thinking to myself "This isn't so bad. At least there is open space and a few animals" But then we left our nice little lunch break and drove straight in to the single biggest storm I have ever driven through. Once we were out of it we figured it out and the storm (which wasn't even in the weather forecast by the way) was over 250 miles long. It took us over 4 hours to get as far as we could have in one hour without snow. It was thick, deep snow and of course (because wyoming) windy as all get out.
Do you see how my windshield wipers are just drawing lines in the snow?
We had to stop WAY too many times to clear the windshield off so my poor, patient and dedicated father could see well enough to keep us on a road.
We stopped to get gas and had to knock hundreds of lbs of snow off of the trailer.
When I realized that you could literally SEE in the sky where Wyoming ended and Nebraska began my hatred for the state multiplied.
However... Nebraska wasn't as nice as it looked for the first little while. The wind picked up... and when I say picked up I mean tornado speeds. Then it started hailing... badly and then the lightening went crazy, scary crazy. All joking aside I was just bracing myself for a tornado to drop. So. Much. Fun!?
We ended up having to stop for the night 100's of miles before we'd planned which made for a very long day (again) the next day. The good news is that we got to stay at an awesomely po-dunk and shady little hotel that had actual door keys instead of key cards. Took me way back.
In the end I am just eternally grateful that my dad was with me and driving us through the mess because if I had been alone Im pretty certain I would have just pulled over and cried.
So I know you may not want to hear positive, because sometimes, lets face it, I just want to be angry for a bit ;), but I think its amazing the way things have worked out. The thing I'm thinking about is that you decided to homeschool AnDee way before all this. Can you even imagine how difficult it would have been to take her out that whole time if not? The school's would have been sending you crazy letters and calls (because school are crazy about attendance all of a sudden). Crappy that Andrew didn't get his surgery (really crappy), but I guess I was just looking for a good thing :). And the fact that your dad could go with you. That's pretty awesome.
ReplyDelete