Spa Night

Rukia had become quite the hairy, bear of a dog!




It was time for a haircut, poor girl could barely see past all that hair! We were feeling lazy and called around to see how much it would be to have someone else deal with the haircut/bath issue now facing us. $65 minimum. Boo! Eventually I will have to get my hair done and I am not spending my hair money on a dog, sorry Rukia. So we got some clippers and over an hour, and a lot of cheetos later :), we had a brand new puppy. She went from being a wild, bear, dog to a petite, girly, princess puppy.



And just so we aren't playing favorites...

Zion's National Park

Zion's was awesome. We left our house and 45 minutes later we were there! The last time we went hiking we had to drive HOURS in order to get anywhere worth hiking around. We were very excited that we could make this a day trip, I was equally excited that we didn't die anywhere along the way.


Hiking in the mountains is a bit different than hiking in the Midwest. First off you have to drive up mountains to get there. I am still not used to driving on the side of a mountain and I don't think I ever will be. There is something very unsettling about driving so fast so close to the edge of a cliff. Do these people not believe in guardrails? Not that they would probably do anything, but they would sure help me feel better. Second, and most importantly, you have to climb up actual mountains.


We started out on a trail but that didn't last too long. We climbed up as high as we could and then realized we didn't quite remember how to get back down :( Every way down looked like we were going to fall off a cliff. Chad's tone of voice changed as he walked around trying to figure out the way down while I was imaging us having to camp up there all night, crying, hungry, and cold. Not dramatic at all. After a few minutes, yup only a few minutes, Chad spotted our way down. The views were amazing and Chad had a great time with all the echoes!


The drive down the mountain was even worse than the one going up. Now we were on a crazy roller coaster, driving on ice and snow, and somehow we were supposed to be the ones in control. Blah! I needed a xanax. We tried going to a visitor's center however, that road suddenly was covered in snow and ice and led to no where. As we tried to turn around to get out we got stuck. It was 55 degrees in St. George and we were stuck in the snow in the mountains. We got out with a little effort and were back on our way.



The next trail we went on felt a little bit more like what I'm used to. We crossed a river and there were lots of trees and rocks and bushes leading up to the mountain. Everything was much more familiar, except for the cacti that was everywhere, and of course, the mountains. We saw some ancient writing on the side of the mountains, the skull and spine of some big animal and a bunch of goats! We are excited to be able to go back and explore the rest of this awesome park!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

Awkward:

• Hearing Penny meowing like CRAZY, then finally wondering where she actually is. We found her locked in our closet with the water heater. Whoops. She had only been in there all day. Even more awkward... locking her in the bathroom all day the next day. Bah!
  
• We've found where the previous residents of our lovely home liked to keep their weed. Every time we open the cupboard doors above the fridge we are assaulted with a lovely smell.
• Rukia still hasn't quite adjusted all the way. She cries, whimpers and barks in her sleep all the time. Sometimes it's funny because she wakes herself up and then runs around the house trying to find what she was barking at. Other times she just cries until I wake her up. Poor little girl.
  

Awesome:

• Zions National Park is 40 minutes from our house!
• Because it's my birthday month I get two free tanning sessions! Nice!
• Menchie's frozen yogurt and sorbet. It's our favorite right now. I love that it's self serve and that I can get a crazy amount of toppings.
  
• The giant tub of cheese puffs from Ashley and Patrick. Rukia and I are enjoying the never ending supply of cheese puffy goodness :)
• Our new camera! We've upgraded! Quite a bit. Instead of janky pictures from our phones we will be able to post some, hopefully, quality photos. We are excited to try out a new hobby, and there is plenty to photograph around here!

Midnight Snack

Around 10pm Chad and I got a little snacky. So we decided to make a cake :) This is our absolute favorite chocolate cake. We had it for my birthday just days ago and it obviously didn't last us too long. Of course we watched The Biggest Loser while eating our ridiculously large pieces of cake. No, we are not actively trying to become contestants. If you're looking for a midnight snack Patrick, our house is the place to be!

Chad barked at Rukia, scaring our poor little sensitive girl. She of course jumped into our laps so we could protect her from... us.

Mohawk girl. Yes, I have turned into that person that talks about her animals ALL the time. But come on, she's so stinkin' cute!

Someone's very excited about the cake!

Just in case you want to indulge in your own midnight cake:

1 cake mix
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oil
as many chocolate chips as you want to chop up!

Mix it all together and throw it all into 2 round cake pans and bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes

For the ganache pile as many chocolate chips as you can into a tub of cool whip (between the cake and the ganache I usually use a whole bag). Microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring well in between. 1 1/2 - 2 minutes usually does the trick. Stir well and cool in the fridge until your cake is ready for you. Spread some of your ganache in between the layers and let it drip all down the sides of your masterpiece. Share with friends or keep all to yourself, we will be doing the later :)

Hope you all had a fantastic night!

Creative Curtains

Chad and I have been wanting to turn these tablecloths from Target into curtains for a long while now. Now that we have a window they will fit on we ran out and bought them!

This was the quickest and easiest project Chad and I have ever done, ever. Of course since it was us though we had a quick setback. We got our tablecloths home and the yellow that we loved was slightly orange in one of them. Boo. Back to Target we went to find a matching tablecloth. After that small setback we were back in business and 5 minutes later, BAM! Curtains done!

Before

After

Best Monday Craft Project ever. Chad and I love to decorate our home. Does anyone else have any fun home decorating projects they've been up to?

The top 6 things we miss most about the Clarkston Ward

In no particular order we miss...

• Kaylie's crazy enthusiasm in wanting to answer every single question. She was always our best singer in sharing time!
• Gage always telling us how much he loves us, how we're the greatest and constantly giving us hugs. He was quite the self esteem booster :) Oh, and him occasionally asking if we had any gum. 
• Gavin sitting back looking at all of us like we had literally lost our minds. He would make faces sometimes like he had walked into crazy town and needed to get out ASAP. After 2 years though he finally seemed to jump on board the crazy train with us!
• Brooke and her refusal to sit on an actual chair. The table was her seat... at least she was sitting! She was Chad's spell checker and would always organize the rest of the class to hide in the dark classroom and "scare" us as we came in each Sunday.
• Tyler was our newest addition and fit right in with us. He quickly became Chad's best friend and was always by his side.
• Joel was constantly drawing and is quite the artist. Much like Brooke he could NEVER sit still, although he could manage to stay "in" his chair. He would be upside down, backwards, hanging off, I think he was actually a Chinese contortionist!

Déjà vu

We are big believers that while your birthday may only be one specific day, you really should be celebrating for at least a week :) So that's what we've been doing! Last night we continued the birthday celebration with presents!

Present #1 was a Jillian Michaels yoga dvd. We've been attempting to do yoga every morning and hopefully this will help, our other options are P90X and P90X-2. They are way too long (1 hour and 1 1/2 hours) to try to fit in before Chad's classes so hopefully this one will help us be more successful, it's only 1/2 hour! Plus we're addicted to the Biggest Loser and it's somehow wonderful hearing Jillian yelling at me.

Present #2 was a surprise, a tanning membership! I know, I know, I'm gonna get cancer and all that jazz... Chad bought me a tanning membership last year though and I LOVED it! I was brown and beautiful and hello?, 15 minutes all to yourself, laying in a warm bed with nothing you have to do and no distractions? All women should love tanning. Am I right Noelle? So excited about that one!

Present #3 was more shoes! A lot of you have seen my shoe collection, it's pretty expansive, but I haven't gotten new shoes in a long while, unless of course you count the barefoot running shoes I got for Christmas :) whoops. That's more athletic "gear" though, right? Chad got me some cute new shoes to replace my gross, old, I'm a six year old girl shoes that have hearts all over them. They are as much a present for me as they are for him too.

After all the exciting presents we went out for sushi and killed time before we went and saw a movie. We tried getting pretzels from Costco but we got there 10 minutes before they closed and they didn't even have pretzels! What? bummer. Who closes at 8:30 anyway, random time. So we went to the "mall" to find pretzels instead. I guess we were spoiled by having a bunch of malls so close to us, especially Great Lakes where we could walk around the mall and shop to kill time before seeing a movie there. It's a sad, sad mall here. Very small, very disappointing. They did however have pretzels! Score 1 for the crappy mall! After finally finding some pretzels we went and got more junk food to sneak in and saw the new Mission Impossible movie. It was a fantastic night, thanks Chad!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

Awkward:

• Whipping egg whites by hand. What a complete bummer! Really was missing my hand mixer at that moment. Workout my right arm, check!

• Utah drivers. Maybe just St. George drivers? I don't know, but either way driving has become quite the adventure. Randomly braking in the middle of the road, turn signals apparently don't come standard on cars out here, and what is up with the giant dips where one street meets the main road? There isn't a single road out here that we've found that has a speed limit above 40mph.

Awesome:

• Getting surprises in the mail!!! Thanks for the sandals Ashley! You're my favorite sister ever :)

• Skyping with all my family for my birthday! It was so much fun to see everyone that I miss all on one happy day. Not only did I get to "see" my whole family but then we "saw"/talked with everyone from Chad's family too! We miss everyone and it was so fun to be able to catch up with everyone all on one day!
  

• Sunshine every day!

• Mountains! They're beautiful and awesome to be around again. I still am not used to seeing them every time I go outside, love it!
  

How has your week been? What was awesome? What was awkward? Share your funnies with us or brag about all of your awesomeness!

They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder

You'd think after our long journey here that we'd all need just a little space, be able to spread out a little...

Nope. Guess not. Despite our best efforts this is how we wake up every morning. We are in need of a king size bed...

and a king size couch apparently! What crazy things do your animals do? Better yet, what crazy things do you do for your animals? :)

Vegetarian Sideshow

Danielle and I have made a new years resolution to become vegetarians. That sentence is pretty crazy for me to say. If you would have asked me a year ago if I would even consider being a vegetarian I would have laughed at you, then spouted out a few reasons why I thought being a vegetarian was a stupid idea. It's funny how a little open mindedness and care for your body can make you do a 180. So with that being said, it has not been easy this past week. You already heard about our meat fest with the grandparents lol. We've also had to deal with the no food situation in our house for the first day or two we were moving in. So what did we do? WE USED OUR MCDONALD'S GIFT CARD! What's the first thing you think of when you think vegetarian? McDonald's of course! Yeah right, but we tried our best. So like the second day we were here we headed over for breakfast. We went through the drive through and I order for the two of us and I told them to hold the bacon, hold the sausage, just hold the meat. When I said this, the lady taking my oder sounded very confused, in fact when I told her to hold the bacon on Danielle's sandwich, she gives me an, OK? So we finish our order, pull around to the window to pay and the woman at the window says, so and so wants to know if you guys are vegetarians. We say yeah, then we pull up to the next window to pick up our food, and I am not joking the woman who took our order and about two or three other employees are standing around the window gawking at us with perplexed smiles on there faces. It was like we were some kind of vegetarian sideshow, and they just bought tickets for the best seats in the house. I love Utah!

What are your new years resolutions? Are you doing something the old you would have never even considered? Anything funny or awkward happen while you were trying something new? Post in the comments please :) Also if you guys like any of our posts feel free to like us on facebook, twitter or google+.

You've had a Birthday shout Hooray!

With all of the craziness in getting our life together out here I actually forgot that my birthday was coming up. We decided to take a day trip down to Las Vegas on Saturday and see what Sin City was all about. We tried to start our day out with french toast, but we got there too late. We wiped away the tears and headed over to Panera, well not Panera, rather Paradise bakery.For some reason it's not the same name. But to us it will be referred to as Panera. We got cinnamon crunch bagels instead. Which may not be the greatest French toast in the world, but when it comes to bagels they're right at the top.


Driving down I-15 to Vegas in the mountains was way more fun in our tiny little focus, rather than the giant rental truck. We had a fun time walking the strip and seeing all of the craziness that was Vegas.




Highlights of our day included me wearing horrible walking shoes and ripping my feet up (you'd think I would have figured out how to pick the right shoes by now), our refusal to pay to eat bad food and the awesome fake "sky" under the "Eiffel Tower". Chad was in awe of the ridiculous amount of nakedness on the strip. For those of you who haven't been to Vegas there are tons of people on the street handing out what can only be refereed to as naked sex cards. Not only are they being passed out like candy, they also litter the streets. So when you are walking and you look down there's a whole lot of very naked lady for your viewing pleasure. At the end of the day we were a little hungry, because of our refusal to pay for the bad food. So we had to get some good food in us fast. Chad and I do not do well on empty stomachs. It's OK when we're people watching because we can just filter our crankiness into making fun of people lol. But when we get alone with one another all of the sudden Chad is Al Kida and I'm George Bush looking for any reason to get that oil....I mean kill those terrorists (you can thank Chad for that analogy). So like always we were struggling to think of a place to eat, then I remembered that Mom and Dad gave us Five dollar off coupons to Olive Garden! It was like we had found the golden ticket in a Wonka bar we were so excited. So we stopped at Olive Garden on the way home for my birthday dinner, enjoyed every bite and then headed home with full bellies, loving one another the whole way.


On Sunday we went to our new ward for the first time. We sneaked in the back late, so NOT like us at all :) and left after sacrament meeting to celebrate the rest of my birthday. We'll try to make friends next week... The rest of my birthday was full of phone calls, skyping, the awesome birthday cake Chad made me, and going to the movies.

Guess which piece belongs to the birthday girl?

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

Welcome to Awkward and Awesome Thursday! It was a crazy first week here, full of awesomeness and, of course, mostly of awkwardness.

Awkward:

• We finally found an awesome sushi place in Michigan, literally 2 weeks before we left :( We've since been on the hunt out here to find something equally as amazing. We finally found what I thought was it, a Japanese market that also sold sushi! It was going to be just like our place in Michigan! As soon as we walked in we were greeted by a kind... old... Mexican woman. BLAH! Nothing more awkward than Mexican sushi...
• We tried working out again. Tried being the key word. Oh P90X, how we love/hate you. This was our first attempt at exercise at our new altitude and with our new vegetarian diet. About a half hour in we both thought we were going to pass out. We're going to have to try again, and incorporate more protein into our diets.
• Before we turned our moving truck in we had one last use for it. The previous tenants left us with a full garbage bin, thank you very much. We had A LOT of garbage, well, a lot of boxes that needed to go. We got most of our condo all unpacked and beautiful and then we went to the extra bedroom, our new storage facility. We literally took every box and just dumped it out. The boxes all needed to go, and we had one last shot with our moving van to move them all out in one swoop. We gathered up all our empty boxes, leaving behind a room that now looked like it belonged to hoarders, and loaded them onto the truck and headed out for a dumpster. We filled up an entire empty dumpster with our boxes as fast as we could, just leaving the extras on the ground next to it. We hopped in our cars to drive away only to discover there was a car of people watching us the whole time. whoops.
  
• After dumping the boxes we went to return the truck. After struggling to find the Budget Rental place we finally discovered our problem. We were looking for an actual Budget Building when in fact we needed to return our truck to the back of a gas station. Seriously? We parked the truck in the back and turned our keys into the girl at the front counter. Not sketchy at all.
  
• Last night Chad popped in our Christmas fireplace dvd and we listened to Christmas music. Yes, we are that cool.
• Sunny has started drooling even more than usual. He had a pool of drool the size of a fist under him on the couch last night. You may not want to sit on our drool couch if you come to visit.
  

Awesome:

• After spending days searching for something to put under our TV to house all our electronics Chad had the brilliant idea to use some cute shelves that we found on sale. Not only were they WAY cheaper than anything else we had even looked at, they look fantastic! Love having a husband who can decorate.
• We went to the best antique shop of my life! There was stuff EVERYWHERE, inside and outside. The tub full of picture frames in the bathroom was my favorite, hands down.

This is almost as bad as our guest room.... almost.

• As I was cooking dinner last night Chad asked if he could help, and for the first time I could say YES! Our kitchen now fits both of us at the same time!!! Woohoo! Plus we have a giant peninsula. Ok, maybe not giant, but that one peninsula has more counter space than our entire kitchen did in our last apartment. Score 1 for us!
• St George has about a bazillion frozen yogurt places. We've been to 4 already. We are on a mission to try them all!
• We have found the BEST french toast EVER! Seriously people this stuff is ridiculous, crazy good. Not only is the cinnamon crunch bread that they use out of control, but they serve it with some kind of crack syrup that makes me want to beg for more. Also, it's served with the best whipped cream I've ever tasted, and strawberries. What's even more awesome... it's ALL YOU CAN EAT! I've died and gone to heaven!

You need to come visit us now! If only for this french toast!

My 3 new best friends

We pulled up in front of our condo and were very eager to be able to see all of the inside. The maintenance guy was there tying up some loose ends so we ran inside to check it out before the realtor got there for us to sign the lease. There are three major reasons that I am THRILLED with where we now live...

As we were signing papers my grandparents showed up! It was fun to see them, it had been a few years, and it was fun that Chad got to finally meet them. Chad and I were looking forward to taking showers (hello, we were stinky nasty) and sleeping. Grandparents had other ideas. No time for cleaning up, they took us in all our filthy glory to their favorite place to eat, KFC. Mine and Chad's new years resolution is to become vegetarian. We just went with the flow and took our stinky butts out to get some fried chicken! After that long drive and not eating a whole lot, let me tell you, KFC tasted like the best gourmet food I have ever had! After lunch the grandparents took us grocery shopping and then we were back at home.

Let the unpacking begin! Wrong! We went out driving to check out where everything was and to buy more things to add to our list of unpacking. We're super productive like that.

We're seeing "red" (Part II)

After driving for hours in the cold, Chad got super paranoid about the cats. We were stopping every hour so that he could run back and make sure the cats were still alive. Penny seemed to be keeping warm, she was snuggled up under a blanket behind the passenger seat. Sunny on the other hand wasn't as catlike. He was in the very back of the car under the rear windshield, meowing, freezing, and had snot dripping down and all over his face. Poor Sunny :( Chad immediately brought him up front with us to warm up. Then of course we missed our little Penny. So Chad decided it would be best to pull off the highway and pull into a dark, sketchy looking park next to a lake where the rapers were surely waiting to drown us. Clearly the paranoia hadn't left yet. He scooped up Penny and then all 5 of us were together again!

Shorty after we got the cats up with us we realized that our power inverter wasn't really charging anything, just barely keeping things going. As we tried to see what was going on with the fuses the one just stopped working. So we plugged our things into the other one and blew it. Back to square one. We pulled off the highway into a gas station hoping that they would have some fuses. Rational thinking was long gone at this point and paranoia was the fueling emotion for all decision making on my part. Chad pulled into some weird gas station parking lot, and I spotted, what was surely a man robbing the gas station. He had a black hoodie on with the hood up over his face and was just standing in the doorway. No one else was in the parking lot. I started freaking out, can't we just go somewhere else? This guy has a gun! We are going to die! We just dodged death at the creepy park for heavens sake! Nope. The fuses took priority over everything at that point so Chad went in. I sat in the truck with the phone ready to call the police with my eyes glued on the front door. A few minutes later Chad came out with a fuse. Turns out the robber was just a homeless guy looking for change. Whoops, my bad. We were able to get one of the fuses going again just enough to charge our cell phones, as long as we weren't using the phones. So we were only to Chicago and watching movies on our laptop was now no longer an option. It was going to be an exciting time.

Thankfully the rest of the night passed uneventfully. We drove most of it, only stopping for a few hours at a rest stop to nap in our truck, our paranoia wouldn't allow us to leave the truck unaccompanied for the night to actually sleep in a hotel. The next morning we woke up to find that we had no cell service. In fact, for the entire state of Nebraska we had no service. I guess the good people of Nebraska have never been introduced to the wonders of a cell phone. Chad was finally able to understand my intense hatred for Nebraska. It is LONG, and boring, and no cell service!

We made it through Nebraska and were finally in Colorado. We had initially thought that we would go around the Rockies, we were nervous about how our truck would do on the mountains pulling our car. But going around meant an extra 6 hours. Plus, the mountains would be beautiful to drive through, right? So through the Rockies we went! Of course as we got there the sun was just going down so our beautiful view was now just darkness. As we started our first gradual ascent the truck was making some very weird noises and slowing way down. Chad panicked, "There's something wrong with the truck! We broke the truck! We broke the truck!" Luckily before pulling over and really freaking out we realized that our truck was just AWFUL at climbing up the mountains. We were going up at 35 mph and then I panicked all the way down each and every single hill. I texted multiple people letting them know that I was going to die going down these ridiculously steep mountains before I could even make it to Utah. It was at this point too that the animals started to freak out themselves. Sunny was a hot mess, pacing back and forth over top of us, meowing and crying. Rukia refused to lay down anymore and started panicking and shaking at any little movement. Penny started crying and crying and crying and then pooped under my seat. We were quite the group. Somehow we all managed to make it through the mountains then pulled over and all of us slept for a few hours, in our truck with the engine running of course!

After a quick nap we were up and going! We were so, so close. But at the same time we were so, so tired. We switched drivers every hour so that we could each get a little sleep. My favorite part of this stretch of road was the caution sign warning me of how my truck could tip over. Awesome. That's just what I need. I was able to maneuver through some mountains, without having a panic attack, and managed to keep the truck in it's upright position. While I may have been stressing over the driving the view was amazing. The red mountains were such a sight after all the driving. We we're seeing red and we were excited! Finally, around 11am Wednesday morning, we had made it. We were tired, and in the same clothes that we had left in. Super gross, I know. We literally stopped only to get gas and food. Some of this due to our determination to get to St. George, but mostly due to the extreme fear of leaving out truck.

Once in St. George we headed straight to our condo to sign the lease. Only hesitation? We had never actually seen all of it before...

We're seeing "red" (Part I)

Has anyone else ever drove across the country in a moving truck? It's a unique experience. After getting sick with the flu we decided to postpone our moving date and we were finally on the road January 2. We were excited about our truck, it was spacious and roomy, the ride was going to be awesome! When we started packing our things in the cab, one thing after another, all the wonderful space that we had slowly started to disappear. One cooler, giant tub of cheese puffs, and an over sized puppy later... bam, no room! Rukia literally laid across me as we drove the whole entire way. Luckily, at this point, the cats were tucked away in our car being towed behind us.

We said our goodbyes and as we were finally headed out we turned right back around to the truck rental company. I guess we shouldn't be too surprised with the way we plan out our road trips. Both of the cigarette outlets didn't work and that didn't work for us. 2100 miles with no way to charge our phones or computer wasn't going to do. We got the fuses fixed and were on the road! Until we realized that the power inverter that we had wasn't charging any of our things. Off to Best Buy! We bought a more powerful inverter hoping that would do the trick and we thought that it had for a while. More on that later...

It was now 1pm and we were finally, seriously, on our way out. We got on the on ramp and realized my door wasn't all the way closed. So I slowed down and opened the door and grabbed the handle, pulled hard and wham! The handle came flying off! Pieces of plastic flew across the cab and our door was wide open. Danielle grabbed the wheel, I grabbed the door, and Rukia tried grabbing onto me for dear life. I finally managed to shut the door despite the wind and Rukia being against me. We saved the pieces of the door and just now put them on, right before we turned the truck in, hopefully no one will be the wiser.

Alright, we're good now... right? Driving across country is easy. Step one, start driving. Step two, there is no step two, all you have to do is drive! Just like Barney running a marathon things are never quite as easy as they seem. We made it to Kalamazoo, we had sunny weather, the crazy was behind us, and all our hopes and dreams about our awesome road trip were still intact. Then we had to be reminded that we were still in Michigan. Boo. All the wrath and fury that is winter in Michigan exploded in our face. Keep in mind that it had not snowed AT ALL the whole winter. It had been sunny and warm and delightful, very unlike Michigan. We were actually feeling kind of sad to leave such beautiful weather. NOT ANYMORE... SNOWSTORM!!!! Our visibility was zero, and the roads immediately became sheets of ice. This is when we discovered that our windshield wipers didn't work. Yay Budget truck! Moving at a whopping 35 mph we had both resigned to living in Michigan for the rest of our lives. Clearly we were not meant to leave the state. After passing the 7th car in a ditch we decided needed to break for pizza.

We pulled off the first exit that had food, expecting all of the businesses to be right there, wrong! We followed the signs to Pizza Hut, which led us up a giant hill, covered in ice from the snowstorm, into a janky, little town. We parked our whole lives in a dark parking lot behind Pizza Hut and Al's Guns N' Diamonds. Awesome. There was no lock on the truck. We went in and ordered and waited 20 minutes for our food. While we waited our paranoia kicked into high gear. I checked on the truck at least 4 separate times. Luckily no one was willing to brave the storm to steal our garbage couch and salvation army table, we really dodged a bullet there.

We made it back on the road, down the crazy, icy hill, struggling to see (ghetto windshield wipers that didn't work) and were back on the freeway. We were a half hours drive until we got out of Michigan, it took us an hour and a half. As soon as we crossed the state line the snow stopped. The roads were perfect, and so would be the rest of the trip, or at least we thought.