Ahhh, wintertime in Ohio! *sigh*

Yesterday, we took a little road trip to my sister Kelly's house who lives in rural Ohio (Amish Country) about 1 hour from us. We had a very nice visit, but it was unfortunately cut short by lovely winter weather. A big snow/ice storm was predicted and when it started snowing, we decided to make a break for it, before it was too dangerous to navigate all the winding, hilly country roads.

Lucky we left when we did, because the roads got slippery quite quickly. Xavier screamed for at least the first 30 minutes of the trip home, because it was very slow going and he hates when the car stops.

We saw numerous accidents and at least 20 cars off the road. But, thanks to Nick's admirable winter driving skills, we arrived home safely in 2 hours (double the usual time). Here's a glimpse of what we encountered on our way home:


"Why we stopping all the time, Mommy!?" Ben was a little exasperated by the slowness of our travel...can you tell?


One thing that usually helps Xavier 'center' himself when he's melting down on car rides is music. We exhausted all the cd's we had in the car. After listening to a Playhouse Disney cd about three times, we were all (especially Nick and I) getting bored with it, so we moved on to more 'mature' fare. :-) Here he is, enjoying 'XTC'. I don't believe he's ever listened to it before, but in this photo, he's actually laughing, so we'll definitely keep that cd on hand for later usage.


Towards the end of our journey, when we knew that we were close to home and actually going to make it (there were some points were we questioned that!) we started getting a little goofy as relief set in (although, I think Xavier was praying in this photo :-).