We enjoyed a few more days of relaxing inside, away from the cold. Taking the dogs for a walk one day turned into a wild animal sighting - a whole herd of pronghorned antelope were in the back field where the dogs were running! They must have been confused though because they started running in circles and heading in our direction!! To everyone else, this was no big deal. But to a girl who grew up in the suburbs and rarely encountered animals that were not pets or in a zoo, this was quite exciting!
The day before we left we went down to Susanville to visit the grandparents and got an added bonus of see the Grovers too. We went to lunch with Grandma Jeane, Estel, Keana and Cody. Then it was back to Grandma's house to visit a little more and see Rick and Rowdy too. Grandma and Grandpa Bonham live not too far so we went over there for a visit before heading back up to Alturas. Our last night was spent playing Pictionary with everyone. Of course the girls continued the rein of beating the boys! Though there was a slight sidetrack taken when Cooper was showing us his new puppets and the brothers then had more fun with them than Cooper! This was a common theme with them enjoying the kids presents more than their own.
Sadly the next day it was time for us to hit the road. We knew there was going to be snow on the pass we took to get to CA so we decided to take the long way in hopes of avoiding it. After making it over what was was supposed to be the bad part of the drive we thought we were home free. Little did we know that Portland got a surprise snow storm while we were driving and the city went crazy!! We hit traffic about 25 miles from home. This turned out to be the worst part of our drive. What should have taken about half an hour took us three and a half hours!! Overall the 6.5 hour drive in good weather turned into a 13 hour drive! But I suppose this is just par for the course for us and our driving/travel luck. Maybe we should have everyone come to us from now on!