EDIT Numero Dos:  It's just after 2pm on Christmas Eve and we have decided to stay home.  The roads are bona fide horrible, we don't have a 4WD, and driving in scary conditions for 500 miles on Christmas day only to repeat the process 48 hours later seems kind of stupid.  We're going to buy tasty food, bake Jesus a birthday cake, find a fun treat (like Mario Kart for the Wii, hopefully!), and get some surprise stocking stuffers since any gifts we had for each other are stuck at UPS hubs and are unable to be delivered to our house on the ice hill.  Ironic, really, since Jason works at UPS.  That's life, sometimes. We're just going to do the best we can to have a sweet and special Christmas together, remembering that it's about Jesus.

Merry Christmas, kids :)

EDIT:  As of 12:45 pm, since Jason STILL isn't off work (he's been there for 13 hours) we have decided to not leave today.  Tomorrow we'll get up, see how the roads are, and if they're better leave then.  If they're still  crazy we'll just stay home, alone.  It's sad.  We love each other, but we've been looking forward to finally seeing his side of the family all year, and yet another holiday alone is just sad.

We're going to go attempt to buy a ham, potatoes, green beans, etc when he finally gets home.  If we can't leave we'll just eat it tomorrow.  If we can leave then we'll save it for later meals.  Either way I guess I'll get Christmas ham, so there's some bright side in this sadness.

I'm too bummed to edit the actual content of this post so let's all just pretend it's true, no?

***

Jason and I are driving nearly 500 miles from Seattle, WA to Missoula, MT today.  No, we weren't drunk when we made the decision... ok, maybe we were.

No, really.  We just have a short window to see family- Wednes thru Sunday- between Jason's work schedule and we want to maximize time with them. Stopping midway for the night is silly, especially since we don't have kids.  We rarely see his dad, brothers, mom, and various step-parents and other in-laws who all live in the great state of Montana, so we're capitalizing on this chance!

In the last 12 hours I have packed, wrapped like 20 presents, made a big dinner (remember... the Jman worked for almost 11 hours on only 3 hours of sleep, then slept for 3 hours in order to be at work by midnight to work another loooooooong shift at UPS), delivered presents and hung out with my lil' bug, picked up the rental car, wrote like 7 blogs for while we're gone (not kidding!).  Oy!  Plus, the apartment is totally clean because who wants to come home to a mussy (yes, mussy.  Different from messy, somehow) apartment after vacation?  The unpacking makes it cluttered up enough!

Now I'm about to drive the first few hundred miles through grotesque amounts of snow while the husband sleeps.  Yippee!!

Weather permitting we'll be there by late Christmas Eve night, so please keep us in your prayers!  If snow forces us to stay home then I'll obviously edit this post :)

Much love, and merry Jesus' birthday eve!