Ho ho ho in the snow snow snow

It took us 38 hours to finally get to Idaho. We left Thursday morning at 7 to drive to Phoenix and arrived at 9 on Friday night. Oh the joys of the holiday season. Massive snow storms have been coming through the Northwest since last Wednesday. We ended up having to fly to Seattle Thursday night and buy tickets out on a different airline Friday. We nearly froze to death waiting for the shuttle to the hotel (thank goodness we booked it online from Phoenix--a lot of people slept in the airport). We didn't get to sleep until after midnight and were up at 5 to get back to the airport. When we got there, the line to check in wrapped around a corner of the building, then another corner, then another corner. There must have been 500 people in there. Charles was freaking out, but the Southwest airlines guy ended up moving us into a special line to check in. Once we were in though, our flight got delayed and delayed again. Then, when we were about to board someone in security set off an alarm and no one could board planes at all. Finally we got on and taxied out to the runway. As we were revving the engines to go, the pilot suddenly decelerated and took us back to the terminal. They canceled our flight and all the flights for that day to Spokane. So we unloaded everything and back to the airport we went. Charles called and rented us a car, but we had to have a really big car or a mini van and they were out of vans. So we ended up in a rear wheel drive Mercury Marquis-ish boat of a car and drove over the pass. The car had no snow tires either and super bad lights, but eventually we made it to Idaho. And the snow just keeps on coming. The daytime highs have been about 12.
Our Christmas shopping has been severely hampered by the weather. But I can't tell you how happy I am to be here. We are going to have a very white Christmas.