sam + elise: Snow Day

We took off to the mountains this past weekend. Just a two hour drive northeast from San Diego, you find snow.

Sam barely remembers seeing snow a few years ago and Elise doesn't remember at all.

She was still just learning how to walk the last time we drove to see snow.

Needless to say, this was an exciting weekend.

We drove almost two hours and just as we were about 7 miles from Lake Arrowhead (our destination), it appeared time to put the chains on our tires. The roads weren't that bad but we (I) didn't want to be the idiot family in the minivan who spun out of control on the ice. Keith agreed better safe than sorry and he put the chains on and off we went. We drove for one more mile and then suddenly stopped in a line of cars. We spent about 25 minutes inching our way up to the CHP checkpoint. I was hoping they were just inspecting the chains but nope, they decided to close the mountain and only locals could drive ahead. (We missed the open roads by about ten minutes...the time it took us to put those chains on!) The cop made us turn around. When I asked if there were any detours available he looked at me completely irritated and sternly said, "LOCALS ONLY!"

Whatever...he was cranky and I was not letting him ruin our special one night snow adventure weekend! We turned around and I already had my trustee iPhone turned on to my google maps feature. I found us some snowy backroads to a small mountain town called Crestline with a place called The Loose Caboose Cafe. I hoped the place would be open and the food would be edible so we could eat lunch and figure out our next step. Did I mention it was almost 1:00 by now and I had been feeding Sam and Elise M&M's for the last hour? I am such a good mom. ;-)

The very nice waitress at the Loose Caboose let us use their phone since AT&T does not have phone service in Crestline (Verizon does). I called the Lake Arrowhead resort and told them our travel issues and they told me they heard that the roads just opened! Keith was doubtful. The very nice waitress gave us an alternate route to try just in case.
We drove on some sketchy unplowed roads but Keith is a confident and careful snow driver so I had no worries at all about making it to our destination. We did get stopped one more time and almost did not make it to our detour route but we got a little tricky and made our way carefully to the resort. We found out later that the roads never opened - they remained closed for the rest of the day.
We got the snow gear on the kids and headed out to play. They loved it!

Elise loved making snowballs.

And loved chucking those snowballs at her Mommy and Daddy.

Sam quickly learned that the snow feels very cold on your face when you dive head first into a pile of it.

This picture cracks me up because I think it looks like Keith just hucked a huge snowball at Sam...really that was Sam attempting to throw that chunk of snow at Keith.

When we first checked in to the hotel our room had a lovely view of the parking lot...

I decided to ask for a free upgrade and they moved us to a room with a view of the lake!

Just a random adorable dog we saw playing in the snow.

So we had a great time playing, a good dinner at the hotel and enjoyed the hot tub with the kids before going to bed. I was so proud of myself for planning a spur of the moment snow adventure and that we made it to the resort despite the road closure.

Then we woke up the next morning and everyone was cranky.

We had a lot of this...