Christmas in Ohio

Well this trip to Ohio was a little rough. We left Utah around 1 pm on December 22nd and only made it to Rawlins WY (about 4 hours) before we hit our first road block. I-80 was closed. So we got off and had dinner in Rawlins. Then we decided to try a back way to go south to I-70 in Colorado. Well we had just passed into Colorado when we came upon a jack knifed semitruck. We weren't stopping in time some Liz had to go off the road to avoid hitting the car in front of her. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, when not 10 minutes later, as we were trying to get our car back on the road, a car came up over to hill going fast and tried to slam on their brakes. They then fishtailed all the way down the hill and slammed into the car at the back of the line (which would have been us if we had not ended up off the side of the road). We spent 4 hours there waiting for a tow truck to come fix the semi, then get all the other cars around the wrecked cars and then they finally pulled us back up on the road. 

After that we decided to turn around and try to make it back to a town to stay the night. We ended up off the road again about 3 miles from Baggs, WY. Luckily the tow truck driver gave us a card and we called them back and they came and got us back on the road again. They also towed us basically all the way into Baggs WY. After that we just got a hotel room and stayed the night.

The next day we headed out again heading south. We made it to I-70 around noon that day. Then we headed east on I-70. We finally made it to Denver around 8 pm that night.  If you are keeping track, it took us 11 hours to go about 320 miles. Then we proceeded to drive straight through to New Castle Indiana. We arrived there around 1 pm, just in time for lunch with Liz's extended family.

After that, we continued on to Ohio. 

That night the boys got new pajamas for Christmas. The younger boys got Christmas pajamas and the older 2 got matching Minecraft creeper pajamas. They loved them.

The next day was Christmas, we just opened gifts and hung out at the house and played with our new gifts. The boys got lots of Legos to put together and play with. Liz got an Ice Cream Maker which she was very excited about and used throughout the rest of the week that we were there.

Connor loved to be right next to the dogs. He was a little rough with them though and we had to constantly remind him not to grab the dogs but to be soft.

The next day we all went to the Cincinnati Zoo to see the Christmas light display.

By far, the boys favorite part was the bug building. Spencer was having a very tough night and didn't even want to be there after about 10 minutes in the zoo. However, even he got really excited and wanted to look at every bug when we came to that building.

Later on that week, we went to a indoor trampoline park. 

Later on that night, we had a karaoke night. 

The next day it snowed outside so the boys got to sled in the back yard a little bit.

We even got one photo with every grandchild....

Overall, we had a great time with family. We also had a much less eventful drive back home than the drive there.