Christmas Vaca-part one

So we left our cozy home here in FL on the 19th of December to head up to WI for the holiday season. We left before dinner and were only going to go for a few hours before we stopped, we thought it would be easier on all of us to just have three short days of driving instead of two long ones. So we got up to about Birmingham when Austin hit angry mode, and we pulled off for the night, when I kept telling Dan, "He feels really warm, I think we need to stop for the night." So we pulled off at the first hotel we could find with a decent reputation--and let me tell you reputation doesn't mean much to me anymore! This place looked nice on the outside, but was a total dump on the inside. I would have made us leave if my son hadn't been running a 103 temp!!! That's right, as soon as we got in the room I pulled out the thermometer and got a reading of 103, I just about died. I gave Austin some tylenol and put him down to sleep in his nice clean pack n play, and hoped that he would be better in the morning. I woke up the next morning ready to pack us up and come back home if he was still running a temp of 103, but alas he was in good spirits and only was at 101, which in a two year olds case isn't that bad, so we packed up the car and drove again till Austin had had enough, this time we stopped off somewhere between Indy and Lafayette and we just got off at the first exit with hotels, this night we got a good price at an Econolodge--I know I'm not a big fan just off the name and rep, but this place was nice! I will never judge a hotel by name again!!! So anyway, this night Austin's temp was down to 97! So we woke up the next day and realized how amazing it was that Austin got fed up right when he did, because the freezing rain had started right when we got off. There were tons of accidents and we were safe in our nice cozy and warm hotel!
So the next day we woke up to the coldest weather ever--it was -30 wind chill!!! Dan went out and warmed up our jeep and even pulled it right up to the door to pick us up, but Austin still cried when he got outside! It was so cold! So we also missed a snow storm that hit the Chicago/ Milwaukee area the night before, so when we go up there we were a little worried about traffic, but once again everything was clear and great for us! The only place that it affected us was when we got off for lunch in N. Chicago we got stuck behind a minivan that got stuck because they just weren't equiped for the weather--this is why we own a jeep in case anyone ever wonders. We actually thought about this when we bought our vehicle and still consider it a very important thing for us to have a vehicle that can manuever easily in the snow! So we got in that day and Austin was normal and fine, and we were all safe!
So that's all for today, I will only post the highlights from the rest of our trip, and not keep doing a play by play of everything that happened, I just felt that this story as a whole is a great example of God's blessings on our life. We were so close to so many very bad situations and we happened to miss and avoid them all!