Christmas Vacation part II: Wyoming

So we left the day after christmas for Wyoming, there was a lot of snow in the forecast, and a lot on the ground, so we stopped at Wal-mart and bought some chains. Once we got to Evanston, we stopped at the tire part of Wal-mart and got Travis got help putting the chains on, since he had never put any on before. So we were pretty happy for a while after that, Travis said it was much easier driving, until a few miles down the road we heard a snap, so Travis slowed down and pulled over, and said one of the links had broken, he did his best to try and fix it with no tools, and started again, it snapped off again after driving a few feet, but he saw a country store up ahead so drove slowly there, and stopped to get some tools to fix it better. He fixed it a little better, and we drove off, but unfortunatly once we got to higher speeds we heard a snap once again, so we stopped and this time both sides and breaks in the chains, so Travis took off the chains and then we turned around and bought some more chains at a local auto shop, and put those on, they worked fine for a few miles, until once again they broke. So we stopped took them off, turned around and return them to the auto shop. Finally I grabbed the manuel for the chains, and read them, finding that they said not to go more then 30 mph with the chains on I realized the problem. We had just been going to fast. So we went on our way with no chains to our destination. When we got to Star Valley Ranch, we knew the hardest part would be getting up the road to my parents house, they had received a couple feet of snow the previous night. My dad warned us we needed some speed to get up the hill. So we tried and tried and tried, but no luck we just couldn't get up enough speed to get up the hill. Finally I called my Dad and told him we were having trouble, so he came down in the 4-wheeler to lend his assistance, while Travis put on our busted chains to see if they could hold up long enough to get us up the hill. One chain broke, but the other one held, but it still wasn't enough to get us up that hill. Finally a guy who knew my dad, stopped and pulled us up the hill with his truck. We were so glad we finally made it, but we also knew we were stuck until it was time to leave, the poor van just couldn't make it up that hill in all the snow. A trip that was supposed to take 4 hours, took 8! We were quite happy to arrive. We had a lot of fun in Star Valley, lots of yummy food, good company, and games. We saw deer several times, but we also had some that came right up to the house, so I went outside and fed them some apples, it was really neat. We also had the fun job of shoveling snow, (I actually only did it for a few minutes) off of the roof into a big pile in front of the house, after we were done shoveling we jumped off of the roof into the big pile of snow, my dad went first and landed feet first, and was stuck in the snow, so he told us to not jump feet first, so I jumped and landed on my bum, and slid down, it was awesome! Then my mom jumped in, but went in feet first and got stuck too, they looked so funny, that I had to take a picture of them, before helping to dig them out. We went sledding on the road in front of the house, that was quite fun with the kids, by Dad and brother got out the 4-wheelers and pulled some of us behind in an intertube. We had lots of fun playing in the snow, but were sure glad to go inside for some nice hot cocoa. Samuel had a cold that started before our trip, that just seemed to keep getting worse, so after we both had a sleepless night, due to his cold, my mom and dad drove Samuel and I into Afton, WY to see a Doctor. The poor old Doctor really looked like he needed to retire, his hands were shaking so badly that he cut the inside of Samuels mouth a little when he was looking at his throat, but we were able to get Samuel some medicine that helped him get better quickly, so we were grateful. Another night, we went into Afton and watched "Bedtime Stories" at the theatre, it was a funny movie. There is a part when the main character's tounge was stung by a bee and was swollen, and he was trying to talk, with his tounge sticking out. Samuel thought that was hilarious, and busted up laughing everytime the guy tried to talk, and after the movie he kept trying to talk like that, and laughed a lot. We also went up to Jackson another day, to this fun pool they have there. The kids had a blast! There were slides, and lots of fun water things to do. Samuel loved sliding down the slides, and couldn't seem to get enough of the water. We ended up going back to Utah a day early, because a big snowstorm was supposed to hit. So we stayed at a hotel in Salt Lake City, and the next day we went again to the children's museum, and then got to the airport, well of course our flight was delayed, but not too bad, but then a big snowstorm hit, and it took us two hours once we got on the plane, to get de-iced and all the runways clear, and apparantly right after we finally took off, they shut down the whole airport. We didn't get back to El Paso, until 1am, so just like before everyone was exhausted, but we were all happy to get home. We had a wonderful vacation, and thankyou to everyone who helped it be such a wonderful experience!