This spring break, my boyfriend and I traveled from Charleston to Los Angeles, CA to visit with his family. Not only was this my first time to the The Golden State, but it was also my first time meeting my boyfriend's mom in person.

Meeting the mom, or any family member for that matter, is quite a frightening feeling. The same questions always cycle through my mind: What if she thinks I'm awkward? What if I don't smile enough? What if I smile too much? What if I start sweating profusely and start spitting out answers to questions that will make her think I'm some demented whack-job?

These questions did run through my mind, but not in the typical meet-the-mom-in-her-kitchen scenario. She picked us up from the airport. There, I was lugging my 50.4-pound bag (shout out to American Airlines for accepting the extra 0.4!) when we were introduced to each other. The whole car ride to her house we had great, simple conversation, and successfully avoided politics. (Whew.) She seemed to like me, considering she didn't give off that awful vibe of thinking I was kidnapping her son and holding him ransom.

Our first adventure together was to Palm Springs, where we took a ski lift ride up a mountain to the second highest peak in Southern California. At this point, all of the small talk (although all good) didn't compare to us actually making memories together on this gargantuan mountain. We laughed together over the thrill of heights all the way to the top as our stomachs' rocking to the sway of the ski lift, and the 78-degree day quickly turned into a 35-degree day. We walked out of the ski lift into a winter wonderland, the snow pure and shimmering. One could say it was almost too pretty to touch, and that was exactly the case, because only five minutes into admiring the beautiful scenery, I felt a cold, powdery ball splat on the back of my head.

I turned and saw my boyfriend cracking up, but then he got a real good one to the back of the head from his mom. Naturally, the two of us teamed up on my boyfriend. She directed me to sneak up behind him to try to tackle him as she would try to push him down from the side. Unfortunately, that failed and both my boyfriend's mom and I ended up back down in the snow.

We soon realized it was too much of an effort for teams, so our two-against-one soon became every man/woman for his/herself. This meant I had to be extra careful, though. Nailing Mom in the face with a snowball would definitely not make a great first impression. We ran behind rocks to take cover and used skinny trees as shields. Snow flew from all angles like a game of chilly dodgeball. Our sneakers and other non-snowproof-clothes quickly became soggy with slush. Though unprepared, we gave our all.

Fortunately, our snowball fight was full of only laughs and great GoPro footage. And now that the trip has ended, I can safely say that my boyfriend's mom is quite fond of me (but perhaps that would not have been the case if I threw a snowball directly at her face).