Was it Inspiration?

Way back in October we decided that we weren't going to go home for Christmas. All of our family live 1000 miles away, and for all of our lives we have always spent Christmas (or in last year's case, the week after Christmas) with our families.

With the impending threat of a strike, plus a tough year financially - we made the decision that a Christmas trip was just not going to be feasible. When the strike didn't happen we started thinking that a post-Christmas trip just might be possible.

Somewhere in the midst of all of that planning, my husband and I both got the feeling that we shouldn't go. It was a little tough; we only get home once or twice a year, and it seemed like an opportune time - given that my husband had this whole week as paid holiday time. Something wasn't right with us though, whether it be a gut feeling of impending doom or just a lack of desire to drive 1000 miles with two "under 5's" and a pregnant lady; and we just kept going back to the fact that we shouldn't go, so we didn't.

Skip forward to December in Washington with record snowfalls the week leading up to Christmas - and now I am reading articles and seeing news reports that all of the mountain passes connecting western Washington to the rest of the state are closed (some indefinitely) due to more snowfall.

As I was hearing these things, my mind started working (as it is prone to do) and I realized that had we gone on our trip, we would be driving back from Utah in this weather (not to mention what we probably would have had to go through to get there). I can't even imagine what we would have done had we got stuck on the other side of one of those passes late at night, on a non-existent travel budget and knowing nobody. I can only think that maybe we were being looked out for when we got the feeling not to go.

So was it inspiration? I think so.