bLiZzArD

i am a little behind, but wanted to share our holiday card with my blog world friends. :)

 

i hope that you all had a magical Christmas this year.

things were a little different for me, because i spent my first Christmas EVER away from my beloved familia.

getting back to idaho just wasn't in the cards for us this year....let's just say that spending over a grand per person for a flight wasn't going to fit in the budget. 

sad.

we ended up spending our Christmas time in maryland with mr. larsen's awesome aunt and uncle.

they were so sweet to invite us, and welcome us into their home and Christmas festivities.

we feel very blessed to have some family fairly close.

we ventured to maryland this last weekend on a bus.

why you may ask?

i know you asked.........because i asked, when mr. larsen informed me of our transportation.

well...the reason is because it only cost us $20 per person!!!

yes. 20 bucks.

i wish that was how much a plane ticket to idaho costs.

the trip to maryland is only about 3 hours and 45 minutes away from manhattan.

we loaded up all of our things, and headed uptown to penn station for the bus stop.

we were booked on the 7 o'clock bus and got there at about 6:15 to get two seats by each other.

when we arrived a bus was at the curb, but little did we know the bus sitting there was the 5 o'clock bus.  

yes...the 5 o'clock bus hadn't left yet, and it was after 6pm.

obviously punctuality is not a priority for MVP bus company.

we went and had dinner at jimmy's burgers...mmmm.

and waited for the next bus...because we lucked out due to our punctuality and got ourselves on the 6 o'clock bus that was going to arrive at 7:20pm. 

whaaat????

yeah, annoying.

finally the 6 o'clock bus arrived and we boarded and set off for the beauty that is maryland.

we spent a wonderful, magical, merry Christmas with mr. larsens relatives.

THEN.

on Sunday, mr. larsen began a conversation with "i have some bad news"

nothing good ever comes with those words. obviously.

he informed me that our bus home to manhattan scheduled for that evening at 6 pm had been canceled because there was supposed to be some snow that night.

haha. some snow.

after a bit of stress mr. larsen was able to get us on a different bus line that left two hours earlier.

we went and hung out with his other uncle for a few hours, and then he drove us to our new bus stop.

the bus was right on time, 4pm on the dot.

we boarded and talked about how the earlier time was going to be better for us.

we would get home and have time to unpack, unwind, and relax that Sunday evening before our crazy schedules picked back up the next day.

it had been snowing a little that day.

nothing much.

just light puffs of white floating around.

it was beautiful.

anywho.

we started on our trek back to the big city.  

we would be home in no time and i couldn't wait.

if you have been watching the news lately you will now know that we did not make it back in time to unpack, unwind or relax.

our bus ride did not take a short 3 hours and 45 minutes.

it took a long 8 hours and 30 minutes.

yeah. i'm not joking.

that means that we got home at 12:30am.

there wasn't just "some snow" 

there was a TON OF SNOW.

like 20 inches measured in central park.

the roads were so bad that i kept saying little prayers that we would get home safely.

this would be us. outwardly unhappy about the current situation we were stuck in.

we obviously hadn't planned for the long ride, so to pass the time we took turns tickling each others backs, talking, laughing, complaining and sleeping. well, mr. larsen slept (shocking)....not me though.

i was WAY to freaked because of all the wrecks and cars i saw that had gone off the road every 20 feet.

our bus driver was a champ.  we may have only been going 10 mph and stopping smack dab on the freeway here and there, but we made it home in one piece.

that was a first for my "day after Christmas" events, i can assure you of that.

i think that this little trip home constitutes as a Christmas miracle. :)

 this is our bus, which holds our spectacular bus driver. i was happy when i took this because we were off the bus.

i was not too happy here as i was blasted with snow and 40 mph winds. 

real cute. i know.

this is down in the subway after we arrived near our home. the blizzard blew the snow underground!

-and this is mr. larsen lovingly trudging through the snow with our over sized suitcase.

you can't really tell by the picture, but here we are walking home in the midst of the blizzardy downfall of frozen water molecules.  it was windy and frigid. ...and 2 feet deep.

so as many of you now know, NYC was hit with the 6th most intense blizzard of all time for the city.

 and the larsens survived it.   

i think this is why we are supposed to be here in NYC.

we are having so many adventures and we love it.

we love you all, and hope you had the merriest Christmas ever.

much love from the big city.

xoxo