when life hands you lemons...

You know that famous phrase "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade?" Well... let me recap my past few days for you.

• Dan and I decided to go to North Carolina
• Someone broke into the lock box at my parents cabin so my father hid the key
• Past Atlanta (the last 4 hours of the 9 hour drive) the weather was terrible
• We got raw meat to grill for dinner (more on this later)
• The last hour of the drive I could hardly see a foot in front of my car it was raining so hard
• I almost hit a dog (heart attack #1)
• Upon arriving, the key was nowhere to be found
• We looked everywhere where it was supposed to be
• In the pouring rain
• Keep in mind it was about 30°F and completely dark, aside from our flashlight and my car's high beams
• The cabin is 30 minutes away from any kind of cell phone service area
• And also down a dirt road, which was flooded (and terrifying to drive through)(heart attack #2)
• Don't forget the steep upward sloped roads!
• Seeing as it was midnight, we decided to trek back to town and get a hotel for the night
• Casually driving along, I accidentally took a wrong turn (heart attack #3)
• Up a steep road
• Which was about as narrow as my car
• With ditches dug out on both side
• Luckily! The GPS worked and got us to the kind-of-main road
• But I was still shaking all over, being wet and frozen and all
• Keep in mind, we had to have the air on because
• a) the windows would get too foggy otherwise
• b) I have no heat in my car
• I almost ran over a guy just hangin out on the side of the road in a flesh colored jacket (heart attack #4)
• But we finally got to a hotel
• And had to throw out half the food we bought 5 hours earlier
• And slept peacefully for a solid 9 hours

Then we woke up the next morning, checked out, and drove home.
Stopping only for pictures at the state line to commemorate our traditionally chaotic vacation.