Christmas road trip!

This year when we started planning Christmas events, Lichar and I had talked about taking a little trip to somewhere that had snow.  Kaiden has been talking about snow since the first "cool" and cloudy day in October.  He keeps asking when it will get snowy.  Poor kid doesn't understand that snow just almost never happens in Houston.  Anyway, long story short, we decided to move the whole family to somewhere snowy for Christmas!

After some debate, we thought it would be fun to visit Red River, New Mexico.  Red River was the sight of many of our childhood summer vacations, so the Ham clan was excited to go back and visit.

This was going to be a mulit-step trip for my crew.  We were going to leave Friday after work and go as far as possible (aiming for Dallas area).  We would spend a night there and then drive to Amarillo where we would also spend one night before heading to Red River.  Because of our mulit-stops, I had the perfect plan--pictured here:

I know, looks like just a suitcase, right?  But it was the perfect overnight bag.  It had two sets of clothes for all four of us (a few extras for the kids), jammies, toiletries, a few snacks and even my families favorite breakfast:  peanut butter crackers.  It was perfect.  For all our stops, we only had to get out this ONE small suitcase.  We each had a corner--all our things neatly stacked in that corner.

The only thing that was wrong with this suitcase?!?  Well, that would be that it sat right here on the floor of our bedroom for our entire trip.  Yes, you read that correct.  We LEFT this suitcase.   How in the world do you LEAVE a suitcase?!?!?!  Now we've done it, and I still can't answer that question!!!  We. could. not. believe. we left this silly suitcase.  We consider ourselves fairly seasoned travelers and never in a million years would I imagine you can leave a suitcase.  But we did.  And it sucked.  But, we had a great trip despite it!!!

This was our odomoter when we arrived home.  1,871.9 miles.  (plus about 60 when I had to reset the counter)

I was very nervous about how these two would manage for almost 2,000 miles on the road.

Thank goodness for technology!

 They actually did wonderful!  We did take lots of long stops...and got creative about finding places and ways for them to play, but overall I have no complaints.

Poor Lichar had to sit like this a lot.  (this picture is from our trip home)  Mailee likes to rub one of our hands/arms when she gets tired.  When she got tired she would yell, "Arm!  Arm!  ARM!"

 I know I grew up in the panhandle, but we were constantly amazed at how far you can see.  It is so FLAT.  With no trees!  Most of our trip looked like this.  At one point in New Mexico we started counting trees to fend off boredom.  After 30 minutes we gave up at 7 trees.  I do not exaggerate.

We also got this cool view of the moon rising over some clouds just west of Amarillo.

So keep reading to see the fun details of our travels!