Buckets of Christmas

Before leaving for Kansas to spend Christmas with relatives we celebrated our own Christmas at home. Of course, Santa had to be notified, so Conner obliged with a note:"Dear Santa,
Please come to the ____ 's house tonight because we will be in Kansas over Christmas.
Thanks!
P.S. Enjoy the cookies"

Good thing he put our name in there. Or, you know, Santa might have gotten confused.

This next picture is completely gratuitous. I'm just so proud of how smart I am...

Yes, the broom and dust pan set was a Christmas present for the little guy. (A miniature set I found at the thrift store, by the way.) I'm no fool -- might as well capitalize on his more, er, fastidious qualities. And now no more whackings on his sister's head from the broom handle.

John and I did a very good job for once of saying we weren't going to spend a lot of money on each other and then actually following through. However, we apparently still spent a little too much.

What can I say? Great minds think alike.

Quintessential John Cusack. You gotta love it. The 80's left us some some wretched music, but some classic teenage angst flicks to make up for it.

We aspired to make the 850-mile trip to Kansas in one day, but were thwarted a little over half-way through by the weather. After passing through St. Louis it started dumping buckets of rain, which turned to buckets of ice after the temperature dropped 25 degrees in about as many minutes.

Did you know you can just call the highway patrol and ask them what certain road conditions are? Well, my mom did. And she found out that the the interstate was closed west of Kansas City because of a 30-car pileup near Topeka. We don't have to be hit over the head twice, so we cut our losses and got ourselves a hotel room somewhere in the middle of Missouri.

Oooohhh were we glad. The next day we saw evidence of the storm that we just got a small taste of...

Many, many cars abandoned off the road, in Missouri and on into Kansas. The sky was clear the next day and conditions were much improved over driving at night in an ice storm, but the plows still had work to do and big bits of road were still treacherous.

We drove by at least two fresh accidents like this one above, but fortunately no one looked too worse for the wear. Too bad we couldn't say that about their cars.

We arrived safely at my parent's in Kansas today, where Olivia has already performed her singing and dancing for a very willing audience, and Sean-Peter has already initiated some rearranging of some Christmas decorations. I figure let 'em go hog wild and by the end of the week they'll be more than ready to see us go ... Hopefully the weather will cooperate for us, too.