On the tenth day of Blogmas, Leeann's blog gave to me... a Christmas travel story

Some years we stay at home for Christmas and some years we travel to my grandparents' in West Virginia. Traveling at a time of year where snow is always possible and crowded highways inevitable always brings adventures. We've had our fair share of traffic jams and snowy slow-downs.

But it was Christmas of 2011 when my family found ourselves in a hotel room come Christmas morning. Hotel stays typically happened well in advance of the holiday. We would be dreaming of sugar plums in a white farmhouse while Santa comes to visit instead of resting in rough hotel sheets without a fireplace in sight.

My high school football team had made it big that year--we went to the state finals! An event that hadn't happened in years, so no one would miss the game , including my freshman sister and senior me. The game that just so happened to fall on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a Thanksgiving we were supposed to spend in West Virginia with my mom's side of the family.

So we stayed in town for Thanksgiving; not a problem since we could celebrate with my dad's family. But it did mean we had to stay for Christmas Eve in Indy and somehow make it to West Virginia for Christmas Day.

My parents are smart when it comes to travel plans. Thanks to my dad's willingness to drive in the middle of the night and my mom's ability to keep him awake, the plan was concocted to celebrate Christmas Eve with Dad's side, leave straight from the party, and then head straight for West Virginia, driving until we were only about three hours away from the farm.

So with Christmas (seafood) chowder warming our bellies and Eloise at Christmastime playing on the portable DVD player positioned between my sister and I, we headed east on the night of Christmas Eve.

That's how I ended up in a double bed in a hotel by the highway with my sister early Christmas morning. Our stockings, at my insistence, hung from the TV cabinet at the end of the bed. I hurried my sister out of bed and the two of us dumped out the cross-stitched, faux socks to see what Santa brought us.

As we sorted through the nail polish, candy, toothbrushes, and Chapstick, my parents worked on packing up the room behind us. We ate a breakfast of cinnamon and pecan rolls carried all the way from Indiana and dressed in our Christmas clothes before straightening up the room. Our Christmas goodies were shoved into plastic bags, the stockings carefully packed away, and anything unpacked overnight tossed back into black and purple suitcases before we rushed back into the car to take on those last three hours to the farm.