Part 3 - New Year's

So, we got back to my aunt & uncle's house, and greeted my grandparents and my aunt & uncle who had driven in from Buffalo the day before. The cousins, as planned, had gone into the city that morning, so they weren't there, and we had a feeling they wouldn't be home until late. So, we all sat around and chatted, and we had pizza for dinner, and then we all sat around and talked and baked cookies and such until they went to pick up the cousins from the train station. And basically, everyone crashed for the night.

On Saturday, Mom, two of my aunts, and my grandmother went into the neighboring town, Beacon, to do a little shopping, and when we came back to the house, we discovered that my other aunt and my little cousin, Ava, had arrived, even though they had said they weren't coming because Ava had gotten sick. So, that was a nice little surprise.

So the rest of the evening was basically spent chilling out. I played with Ava, and hung out around the house. We had a bunch of delicious food for dinner - bourbon chicken, rolls, macaroni salad, bacon-wrapped chestnuts, buffalo chicken wing dip, etc. And then, we all gathered around the tv and counted down to the New Year. And after all the screaming and hugs and everything, all the kids went out on the back porch and popped poppers and my uncle lit fireworks in the backyard. And then, everyone stayed up to watch some of the music performances, and then we all crashed and went to bed.

On Sunday, my grandparents and two of my cousins left, as well as my aunt and Ava, and then Mom, two of my aunts, and I went shoe shopping, and I ended up finding a cute pair of gray heeled ankle boots. And then, we stopped at a party a friend of my aunt's was throwing, and chatted for a while, and then we went back to the house, hung around for a while, and then had dinner and spent the evening relaxing and watching tv. And then, we packed up our belongings, and went to bed.

We left around nine the next morning, and stopped at Shoney's for lunch around one. Then, we stopped for gas and snacks around six, and that's when the fun began. We were driving through Virginia when the snow started to really fall. We'd been driving through flurries most of the way down, but they were few and far between. This was just snow falling everywhere. People were going 20 miles per hour on the highway, and there were a ton of accidents out ahead of us that the tow trucks had to clear, but no one around us was slipping on anything. Mom thinks there was probably a pretty quick temperature drop right before we came into the area, and that caused cars to start sliding off the road.

So, in the end, we got home around 9:30, so what should have been a ten and a half hour drive turned into a twelve and a half hour drive. Ugh. But, we got home, and then crashed, and I didn't wake up until 10:30 the next morning.