December pictures and "Mommy's Winter Car"

We've had a great but very busy Christmas - several neighborhood gatherings to attend, lots of shopping, baking & candymaking, holiday cards, present wrapping, decorating, cooking Christmas Eve dinner...and of course lots of shoveling snow and chipping ice as well. Click here for a gallery of photos from the last few weeks.

Unfortunately, it appears we did not get any photos from Christmas morning, believe it or not! And none of our decorated Christmas tree (it's still up for another few days so I will snap one and post it before we take it down). Part of the reason we didn't get photos Christmas morning is because we were up well before dawn. And it wasn't actually the kids' fault - Jason popped awake at 5:45, went down to make coffee, light the tree, and then came up and bounced around until we all got up to go downstairs. He got video of them waking Uncle Andrew up by running in and jumping on his bed, but it's a bit too long to post. Anyway, suffice it to say we all had a very merry Christmas. And I should mention it was a white Christmas as well - we got about 7 inches here at the house, all falling in big fat powdery flakes all Christmas Day. The town average of 5.9 inches was a record breaker for Boulder.

Lastly for this post, I am happy to say that yesterday Jason and I traded in our Honda Odyssey (the one that caused me so much anxiety in the snow a few weeks ago) for a Toyota Sienna AWD. Yes, it's another minivan, but it's pretty sweet, with every bell and whistle you can imagine. And it is rock-solid on snow and ice. We even tested it on our hill before we bought it. Zach can't seem to get the idea that this is a permanent change, and has dubbed the Sienna "Mommy's Winter Car."