Christmas Vacation

So, we had quite the eventful Christmas Break. It all started on the 20th of December, when we left for Laramie, Wyoming where we were going to spend the night. Just past the dam on the Provo River, we hit a snowstorm. Charles was fine driving, and I was fine, but his sister Elisha started freaking out about how we were going to drive off the road or get in an accident. So, we stopped at Park City and ended up spending the night at the Best Western there. Not even an hour from home. The hotel there had an indoor pool just outside our room that was supposed to close at 10 pm, but people were in there until 2 in the morning with varying degrees of loudness, keeping the baby (and consequently me) up most of the night.

The next morning, we left about 8 and made it to Rock Springs, Wyoming before we hit a storm again, which ended up closing I-80 at Rawlins and leaving us stuck in a hotel again for the night. We kept watching the interstate, which we could see from our window, hoping that it would open and we could just leave. About 3 in the morning, the freeway finally opened and we left Rawlins about 5:45 in the morning. Charles was such a trooper and drove us through the driving snow and freezing cold, allowing us to finally meet up with Annie, who was picking up Elisha and getting us to my parents' house at 5:30-6:00-ish, only a day later than we had planned on. Sydney was great with all this travelling, only really getting upset when she was hungry.

We stayed in Nebraska over Christmas and had a wonderful time. It was great to spend time with my family and let them play with Sydney. Our plan had been to leave on Friday, but Charles' family called and told us a snowstorm was going to be coming on Friday and that we had a Chamberlin Family Christmas thing in Wichita on Saturday, so we decided to head out on Thursday night. Everything was great until somewhere between Ellsworth and Great Bend where we hit a snowstorm that slowed us way down and made us get into Dodge City over an hour later than we had planned--which made Sydney mad, since I had worked out feeding her so that I wouldn't have to feed her more than once in the car and we were well past that point. But we had made it.

Ironically enough, it never snowed on Friday. Instead, it was just really cold and Sydney was extremely fussy. This was odd for her, and I was a bit worried, but everyone kept telling me that she must be teething and that she just needed pain relievers and she would be fine. Saturday morning, after being up most of the night with an unhappy baby, I woke up with a sore throat and found a baby with a ear covered in gunk. Her eardrum had burst during the night due to an ear infection or cold, we're not sure. So, we called the pediatrician in Dodge City (who is also the bishop of the ward) and he prescribed her some amoxycillan and then spent four hours at the medical center to get a strep test to make sure I didn't have strep.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, until New Year's Eve as we were getting ready to leave in the morning and realized that our money that was supposed to have come in from excess pell grants hadn't come in yet and we didn't have enough to get home and be okay if there was an emergency. After our track record for this trip, we didn't want to risk it, so we decided to wait another day and see if the money came. It still hadn't come in, but Charles' parents loaned us some extra to help us out and we were thankfully able to make it back to Provo safe and sound.