A Christmas We Will Never Forget

As I mentioned, Tony was scheduled to work on Christmas Day. So, we really had no choice but to leave my parent's house even though there was a blizzard outside.

So, at 4pm, we loaded the car and braved the storm. The typical drive from Shawnee only takes about 35 minutes. So we figured with the weather, it should take us about 2 hours.
(My parent's yard as we left out on our trek.)

(One view as we drove down the road.)

(This is what a complete white out looks like. We could see absolutely nothing. We just prayed that no one was in front of us and that we were still on the road.)


At 4:25, we were about 2 miles from the Harrah/Newalla Road exit and all traffic came to a stop. This is about 1/3 into the distance to get home. We couldn't see far enough in front of us to know what was causing the delay, but we feared the worst. The traffic was very impatient and quickly made the normally two lane I-40 into 3 lanes. We sat completely still for about an hour and a half and we finally began moving again. We were so excited. We passed the jack-knifed semi and thought we were home free. Until we stopped again after going only 1/2 mile. We would roll forward a little at a time, but I only think that was because of people jumping out of line and making a third lane again.

We passed the time listening to the radio and eating the only food in the car...Treasa's chex mix. We had no water and only one blanket. I read some since my friend Kelly taught me to always have a book with me...Thanks Kelly! It was a real life saver. We prayed a couple of times and we all cried a couple of times too. It was very, very stressful.

After a while, we could finally see the Harrah/Newalla Road 1 Mile sign. But we were again sitting completely still. At about 8:45 (yes, we had been sitting on I-40 for over 4 hours at this point), a man came walking between traffic...we think he was a sheriff because he had a badge on his jacket. He said that there was no help coming for us and were on our own to figure out how to get off the highway. There was a snow plow stuck in the traffic with us and the plan was to get him to the Harrah/Newalla road exit so he could plow a path for everyone to go back east and get hotel rooms Shawnee.

We followed the plow to highway 102, where we exited and took the 6 mile drive to Tony's parents house. It was extremely scary and I had my eyes shut the majority of the drive.

We finally made it to Tony's parents house at 9:50....almost five hours after we had left my parents in Shawnee. We were all relieved to be safe and not to have to sleep in our car, but we were also sad that we would miss Christmas morning at home and that our pets were stuck at home with no one to feed them.

God was with us that night though and we were all thankful to have a warm place to sleep.