Our drive down to SC

We left around 8:00am on Christmas morning to begin our drive down to SC. This was our first time driving back to SC as we have flown the other times. There was a lot of anticipation: what the weather would be like, the condition of the roads, how Ashleigh would do in the car...  We got a surprise snow on Christmas eve, so we were a bit concerned about the roads, but they plows and snow trucks were out on Christmas Eve to clean up the "mess." Look how beautiful everything looked on Christmas morning!

Ashleigh was ready to go! She was armed with toys, lots of books, blankets, and the tablet!

I (Erin) started off the drive since Matt had been at church until 1:30 that morning following Christmas Eve services. Once we got off of our road, the roads were fine! I still kept a close eye out for any random ice patches that might pop up. The snow started to disappear once we went through Toledo, OH. The sun was out and the roads were not crowded. It was a great day for traveling! We did have a little trouble finding a place to eat lunch that was actually open on Christmas Day! I had packed pb and j sandwiches just in case we needed them, but we finally found a Burger King that was open next to the gas station where we filled up our car.

Everything was going fine until we hit the KY/TN line. Then we were met with this for 30 miles...

Very thick fog! Of course it was my turn to drive again. The fog was so heavy that we couldn't even see the other lane of traffic at some points. Everyone was going fairly slow and giving each other plenty of room. The only way I could "see" the roads at some point was because I could see the flashing blinker lights from the car ahead of me. We were so glad when the fog lifted! We only had to go about an hour and a half more before we arrived in Knoxville, which was our destination for the night! We had plans to stay with our friends, the Comptons! We were so thankful that they were willing to have guests over on Christmas Day! They have three girls (4 year old twins and a 2 year old), so Ashleigh was in heaven! They played so hard and had so much fun!

The trampoline was Ashleigh's favorite toy!

Thank you Laura and Ben for allowing us to stay with y'all and for the yummy food! (They cooked an entire Christmas turkey feast for us!)

The next day after eating some delicious pancakes, we traveled 4.5 more hours to Columbia! It rained almost the entire trip, but there weren't any major backups, and we were just so thankful to be out of the car and back with family!!!!