a family christmas

right. so perhaps my updates are not of a timely nature.. but i'm much more of a visual learner so photos are a must to accompany the ramblings..

so departure was set for pgh mid afternoon on friday 12/18. there were a few musings in the news about some snow expected in the area. but determined to get home for the holiday, and not actually believing much would actually fall, we set out about 2 pm with thoughts of sugar plums....errr something...

the first 2 hours we hummed along pretty good. weather.. what weather we joked. THEN literally as soon as we turned north around winston, it started. big, HUGE flakes began falling. RUH ROH....we went from cruising to well cruzin' as in the slow drive by kind. i pulled out the map and said - well lets get to charleston WV and see what time it is. one hour later that plan became.. let just get to beckley.... then it was ummmmmm.... it was at that point about 6 pm, dark and bobby is saying "i cant really tell where the road is". yep. so we have just crossed into VA and by this time there is about 12 or so inches on the road, its near white out and we've seen more cars going into, fallen in or trying to get out of ditches than i could count. so finally an Exit. YES - surely we can get a hotel for the night and try again tomorrow. but just like jesus.. there was no room at the inn. not that exit or the next. or the next 8. i called. all of them. but no matter because by this point traffic had come to a standstill.

so with no place to stay, no where even to move, its about 9 PM and we are sitting on the highway. i guess it was such a "never happen to you" kind of thing that you really dont know what to think. we werent scared or worried or really anything. just kind of accepting of fate. so we just kind of tried to doze off a bit, thinking to catch some ZZZs before the traffic started back up. around 1 am it moved enough for us to get to the exit about 400m down the road. we pulled off and made the decision to officially sleep in the car and reassess in the morning.
here's me with the girls on top of the exit. you can see the lines of cars still stuck on the highway...and the snow still coming down.

here's chez honda in wytheville Va. a nice cozy spot.. until about 5 am when i was ready to holler uncle and actually sat up and yelled THIS SUCKS!!! i had even attempted to crawl in the back with the dogs, thinking fur=warm, but forgot that they are actually on the larger side of medium-sized and well frankly i'm not exactly petite. game over on that idea.
the next morning we heard from some truckers, my new BFFs - and yes we are now facebook friends, that they had actually closed the highway the night before due to some horrific accidents near the tunnels. but were re-opening it about 830am. well nothing to do but set out again. so after a steller nutritionally jam packed breakfast of pop tarts and chocolate doughnuts, we made a go of it.

my view for about 2 hours. total forward movement- 40 yards. for someone like me with zero patience this was my own personal hell. admitedly friday was somewhat adventurous but you get to a point where the thrill wears off and you just want to get where you are going. i literally cringed when i realized we still had about 500 miles to drive that day. at one point we tried to stop for lunch at a burger king - one of the few places along the way and the line was about 40 deep.. so we hung our heads and moved on..we tried to stop for dinner but the places were closed cause of all the snow.
long story short (is that even possible now??) saturday was stop and go all day long. we would hit some cleared roads and GASP get up to 40 mph only to be stopped dead again for hours.
nothing to do but get out and walk the dogs and chat up the other travelers, have some snow ball fights, build snowmen and at one point there was a krispy kreme truck stopped amongst us and i thought that at some point that driver was going to have a hell of a time fighting off hungry mobs!

one side note- and i dont want to get into it, cause it was quite terrifying, but 29 hours of travel, and we are literally about an hour from home and BAM accident. scariest moment. ever. to go head first into the median and then fly back across three lanes of traffic. the whole "life flashes before your eyes". yep. happened.

BUT we somehow ended up, in pieces, in pittsburgh.

heading out to the steeler game sunday afternoon was quite the boost. i love pittsburgh if not for the mere reason its a SPORTS town that loves our team! we had lost 5 yes FIVE in a row to some pretty piss poor teams yet the stadium was full and loud. (you cant really go anywhere, anywhere, with out counting at least 1 out of every 5 people with some sort of steeler gear on. its a disease i swear). so- GREAT game. here's me at half time with the city.

and here's me with my brothers! guess who is the most obnoxious....


exhibit A: my video of the last play of the game. the extra point to win! mind you this was after a mile long, last minute of the game, big ben drive down the field, that went forward and back and forward and then with three seconds left a WOW play that tied the game and literally made the stadium shake.



here's a photo of the stadium and you can see one of the inclines.

so the rest of the week:

cards were played - yes of course i won. duh.


we saw my little brother's first house.


it snowed. and then snowed some more. then i shoveled. and then shoveled some more..


jen told me to go find some hills to run for a very long time. YEP no problem there. just to get out of my neighborhood there is a monster.


we do a chinese christmas - yes i know that is very politically incorrect but thats what its called...and its very very fun. and while there have been no fist fights over gifts to date.. i feel one brewing...i got screwed this year and ended up with #2. so with 5 more after me.. i picked wisely...and ended up with a winning lottery ticket..


and of course the obligatory pose by the tree


my 97 year old grandpa spent the week with us. still sharp as a nail and checking his email.


and to top it all off who doesnt want to throw 4 flights into the mix...ahhh holiday travel. total. utter. chaos.