Marriage Retreat

I am so EXCITED!!!!! Some of you may know that we love Aspen Grove Family Camp. Well, one of their best kept secrets are their Marriage Retreats. They are always booked months in advance and very hard to get into. Well today I was on the phone with Aspen Grove paying for the summer family camp and I asked the lady if by any funky chance there were any cancellations for the marriage retreat this weekend. She started laughing and said someone had just called before me to cancel and she had ONE opening. Needless to say,I was all over that and proceeded to call around desperately trying to find someone to stay with our kids for the weekend. Luckily I am watching my friends kids for 10 days in March when she and her hubby go on a cruise....so she is paying me back by watching our kids whenever we need her to. It all worked out and we are leaving tomorrow at 1:30.Yeah!!!!! Two days of peace and rest!!! Part of the retreat is cross country skiing ,which we did last year also. It is so beautiful there.....we are really looking foward to it.
Chris just came into the house after working on the snow blower. It's 11 pm. He had to fix it before we leave so Alex can snow blow the driveways for the babysitter when she needs to come and go. Yesterday morning at 6 am in the dark Chris went out to clear the driveways (we have one very long one and another shorter RV pad). He walked the driveway to check if his Wall Street Journal was out there,but it was not. He started snow blowing and to his suprise the paper had been buried in the snow and TOTALLY jammed the snow blower. He was already running late and needed to leave. He tried to pull out of the RV pad in his car(front wheel drive), but got totally stuck and had to hop in the suburban (4 wheel drive) and get a running start to make it accross the thick snow and onto the road. Luckily we have awesome neighbors who helped me get his car UN STUCK and then proceeded to snow blow both driveways for us. SNOW SNOW SNOW!!!! I am sick of it already and it is ONLY January. Last year it snowed AFTER Memorial Day.
Tonight when Chris was coming up our hill, which is very steep , his car wasn't gonna make it. (which happens alot around here) It was slipping and sliding. Luckily a big SUV was driving by and pulled in front of him and strapped him to his car and towed Chris up the hill and safely home. He was going to have to call me and have me come down and pick him up. And if you leave your car on the side of the road overnight you get ticketed because it gets in the way of the snow plows doing their job.
After reading this post don't all of you Californians just want to move to a snowy location???? I guess I now know why 1/2 of the people on our street are "snow birds" and live in CA or AZ in the winter. It sounds pretty good to me...if we had the money. Maybe if we stop feeding, clothing, getting braces, and music lessons for our kids we could afford that winter home in CA.???? hhhmmmmmm sounds like a good idea to me.