Oh what a ride we have had.....

The plans were to head to Brandon's parents house to celebrate an early Christmas with his family. We packed up Friday, left at noon, and made pretty good time. Made it to the rest area we usually stop at without any issues. It had started to snow and was coming down at a pretty good clip. His mom was headed our way and was about an hour behind us. We decided to wait as it was just going to get worse. The plan was I would take her car (actually his Dad's older Camry) and she would ride with Brandon. We finally met up with her about 5:30 and attempted to get on the highway. Well see...people down here don't know what to do when driving and is snows. So there were a bunch of issues with the on and off ramps. We had to wait about 30 minutes before we could actually get on the road. In the meantime, my cell rings and guess who...you guessed it...Ms. Conway. She wanted me to know all about the fact that my car alarm was going off, and it was really disturbing her, and she wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I was in blizzard conditions 3+ hours away. I will get right on fixing that. I didn't know what to do. She was telling me she was calling the police to help with it or I should call AAA to have them disarm the alarm. Long story short, my friend from work swung by and by that time it was not going off, but the intererior light was on. We think there is a short in the electrical system. Two more friends stopped by and it was off at that point. But Ms. Conway was sure to lecture me on how I should tell me when we are going out of town and give my car keys to someone else, you know make arrangements. Umm...Yeah I will get right on that! We get on the road by 6 and we went all of 40 miles maybe when we finally pulled into our motel at 1:30AM. It was horrid. We stopped the first time, and parked on Interstate 81 for about 40 minutes. Then we went about 1/4 of a mile, stopped again. We started a bit later and barely moved and then we sat for 2 HOURS!!!!! Not moving, sitting, doing nothing. Thank goodness we had filled up at the rest stop. It was craziness. It was not even snowing that hard. I miss New England snow driving ability. It seems that there were 1000 cars stranded on 81. The Nationial Guard was rescuing people out of stranded cars. We attempted to head out today only to discover that the highway was being closed. We opted to stay another night here and Roanoke and hope for the best tomorrow. His sister never made it on the road which is a good thing. She would have been stuck with the kids for hours. I really thought we might be sleeping in the car last night. It was scary. And Brandon's dad has no power, no water and the house is chilly. They got bad ice. It has been quite an adventure. Thank you to all my phone a friends who kept me company last night. I appreciate it. There is only so long you can sit alone in a car. I actually started reading for the 2 hour stretch. And Murphy's law, the one time we don't leave the house with a bunch of snacks and drinks is when we get stuck. Never again! I have learned my lesson. But we are all fine, we are cozy warm at the travel lodge, with TV, fridge, microwave and wireless internet! Woohoo!! And Miss Reese loves the snow! She has been so good for a dog who had to be kennel bound in a parked truck for hours on end. She is a prize! Happy winter! And I still love snow!!!!