Jason, the boys, and I spent yes­ter­day and today at his par­ents’ house. We intended on only spend­ing yes­ter­day with them, but it got late, and the weather wasn’t sup­posed to be all that great, so we spent the night. Today, we went to church, ate out, and after­wards, I took a nap (and it was WONDERFULLLLLL!!!) on the couch. We decided about 3:30 to get mov­ing and get home before dark. Gen­er­ally, it’s a pretty quick 60 mile trip on the inter­state. Well, today, things were a bit different.

Before we even got out of town, I found that dri­ving the speed limit on the roads *in town* was too fast. I could feel myself slip­ping on the ice, and I had to slow down on roads that were only 40 mph. Nor­mally, Jason does all the win­ter dri­ving, and I either read or stare down the road and freak out inter­mit­tently as I feel the car slide a bit. Well, he’s had the flu (not the stom­ach flu, the actual influenza flu) since Thurs­day, so I got the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice my win­ter dri­ving skills. We started out of town, and the first 3 miles were great. I was very relieved until we went around a curve in the road, and all of a sud­den, the road was cov­ered in ice.

The nor­mally 60 mile, hour long drive became a 25–35 mph, 90 minute drive. As bad as it was for us, I was con­cerned about friends of ours who had gone out to west­ern North Dakota for a hockey trip. They had a 5+ hour trip on nor­mal roads. I had Jason call their house while we were dri­ving home and we got no answer. We got home, and I meant to call them again, but I was wor­ried it was too late so I decided to wait until morn­ing. They just returned our call and said that between the turnoff where we live and the one they take, which is about 10 miles, there were 13 cars in the ditch. It was just a quick con­ver­sa­tion so I’m not sure how long their trip lasted, but if it was any­thing like ours and they had to deal with the dark, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it was 8 or more hours.