The Nightmare Before Christmas

Wow. What a night. I don't know if you've been watching the weather reports, but it was a little "treacherous" last night in Cincinnati. My roommate from BYU, Erin, and her husband Alex were flying in there to visit her family, and Adam and I went to pick them up from the airport and spend the evening with them. We left Louisville around 2pm. The weather originally said it was just going to be a little gloomy, but that quickly changed to freezing rain advisories, and we saw every bit of it. Their flight came in at 3:50pm, and we should have had plenty of time (since the Cincy airport is actually in Kentucky) but it still took us over 2 hours to get there. We saw car after car spun off on the side of the road. When we finally made it to the airport and picked them up, we decided to go to the Gap Distribution Outlet a few exits down from the airport. Traffic was literally crawling, and we didn't even make it the two exits until 6pm!!!

So we spent some quality shopping time, hoping to wait out the bad driving conditions since it was supposed to warm up later in the evening (yeah, I know that's weird, but true). We kept hearing these bits and pieces of strange conversations about this freeway being closed and that freeway being closed, but finally decided to brave the roads again, and headed up into the city. On the way, we had to avoid a bumper complete with a license plate in the middle of the road, and a van (I believe it was the owner) facing the wrong direction on the other side of the the road. We made it to Red Robin a little after 8pm...and were starving!! We were one of only 3 or 4 groups in the whole restaurant. But it was sooo worth it--who knew their Parmesan garlic fries were bottomless, too? And the freckled lemonade--love it!

After Red Robin we dropped our friends off at Erin's parents' house, and got to see her mom who is one of the sweetest most wonderful people in the whole world. She asked if we wanted to spend the night--an offer we turned down and quickly regretted the decision. We got back on the freeway to head back and thought we were home free, but when 71 split from 75, there was yet another accident and 71 was completely shut down. After a long, long wait, we finally made it back to Louisville around 2am.

So, for anyone who has seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, you know it has a happy ending. And so does this. Today, when we woke up and started thinking back about the previous day, somehow it wasn't that bad of a memory. First of all, we were incredibly blessed that Connor wasn't with us. He stayed home and played with his Gram and had a wonderful time and was in bed by 8pm. Secondly, Adam and I actually got to spend some alone time together on the way home, though I think both of us would have rather been asleep in bed. And finally, as horrible as all the traffic was, I can honestly say we had a great time last night. Erin always has been and always will be one of the people I most enjoy. And when you put Alex and Adam together....my face hurt from smiling and laughing so much. Adam and I both commented it was good it wasn't on Christmas Eve. But on this Christmas Eve as I reflect on all our blessings, I'm thankful to have such wonderful friends who make even the worst situations into memories worth keeping.