Anyway, so almost 2 hours later, I've got short hair with red highlights... argh... I would have been ok with the cut if the lady didn't trim it even more at the end. The brightness has died down a bit since, but something about the cut just makes styling it really frustrating. I can't put my finger on it. Like my hair has gone limp and no matter what I do it just doesn't sit right. I bet its the dye. It has stripped my hair of something that gave it some volume before. Mark assures me its just the weather. hmmm... I'm gonna have to find someone new to cut my hair. Anyone have recommendations? I should have got my haircut when I was in Taiwan... and the massage was included too!
OK enough obsessing over my hair.

The rest of our trip was good. Until the last day we were there, when we were on the road in the middle of rush hour when we got caught in a heavy snow. It had rained and snowed on and off the night before so when it snowed heavily on top of the slush, it turned to ice. It took us an hour to get out of Mark's hometown! And it's not a big town! It's very hilly and rural so cars were sliding into ditches all around us. We were glad to be driving the Tahoe cause of its weight and all wheel drive, but it gave me a bit of a scare when we stopped on a hill and had a moment of vertigo when all the cars around us started moving to the right, when really we were the ones sliding to the left into the other lane.

We got close to getting on the freeway, and noticed that no cars were moving. So we exited quickly and took back roads to my parent's home. Those back roads don't get plowed, are rural and hilly, and were packed with people also avoiding the freeway. We kept driving down one road and turning around again and again after finding traffic of sliding cars, abandoned cars left and right, and closed off roads. I felt bad for people around us that got caught traveling home on the ice; when they left in the morning the sun was shining and looked like nice day. People panic and are driving poorly and there are accidents everywhere. I was so nervous that some car was going to slide into us or we'd go sliding off the road and be stranded. Mark probably thought I was cold but really I was shivering from seeing so many wrecks and
close calls. I was so sore the next day from being so tense.

Well, what usually takes us 20 mins to get from Mark's mom's house to my parent's house, took us 4 hours. 4 white-knuckled-hours!! 4 hours to go 20 miles. Mark says that we averaged 5 miles an hour, that's about walking speed, so, we could have walked to my parent's house in that time! Wow.

But that wasn't all. We decided to make going to the airport safer the next day, we would drive back to Mark's mom's house to return the Tahoe, pick up our luggage, and my dad would drive us back to his house to spend the night. hmmm... it sounds like we were crazy to go through all that again... well I think it was, but there wasn't another option. The roads were icy in Mark's hometown, and it wasn't in mine.

So, it was another scary drive. We took another route this time, but this time in a small car without all wheel drive. It was later at night and less crazy drivers on the road, but still I was so nervous in the back seat feeling our car slide and the tires spin. I'm so glad to get through that night safely.

I can't tell you how relieved I was to come home to DC and feel beautiful 60 degree weather and see the only snowflakes were on my Christmas tree. It does get icy here in DC too, but we have less hills to worry about.

So, no more traveling till the end of this month. And it's to sunny LA. After traveling so much the last months, I think I now really appreciate the comforts of our own home, no matter how small and simple it is. Maybe this Christmas will actually feel like our own Christmas in our own home. And not like a small version of Christmas of our own and then fly off to really celebrate it with family later like in years past. But my thoughts on Christmas since being married is another blog entry...

*Note: I have to point out and give credit to Mark for changing the blog template. I had no part in it. It may look like something I would do, but it isn't. But I can promise you that I will tweak with this one to make it an original. "When?" is the real question. Good job, Mark. You picked a winner. Quite appropriate for winter time, I think.