Putting my new Sienna to the test

Between the snow and some minor but annoying illnesses running through the children, we've been doing a lot of relaxing around the house lately (read=passing several days without leaving the house, or even getting out of pajamas, for that matter). Today we decided we'd pack the kids into the van and take it for a drive to check out the nearest ski resort. Funny, but on the one hand this was not as big of an undertaking as it sounds...Eldora Mountain is only 21 miles from our front door. But on the other hand, with three children under the age of five, there is no such thing as a quick, spontaneous jaunt so it took us about five hours from decision time (7am) to get out the door (12 noon).

When we started out from Boulder the weather was 40 degrees and sunny, but as we wound our way up into the mountains the snow started to fall and the wind started to blow. The Sienna handled it all admirably, although I think I did give Jason and Andrew heart attacks when the car lost traction briefly and I had to guide it out of a fishtail. And then, just before the entrance of the resort, we got onto a road that follows along what was clearly the shore of a frozen lake. And the wind was blowing snow across the lake and in front of the car...at times we were in total whiteout and it was pretty scary (Jason took a picture of my death grip on the steering wheel). The only thing scarier was coming back down through the same stretch, because then we were on the side of the road closest to the lake, and all I could think about was that I might at any moment take my entire nuclear family plus my brother in law over the edge to a watery freezing grave. Needless to say, we made it.

In between the lakeshore drives, we did drive around the packed parking lot at Eldora but it was just too blustery and cold to contemplate getting the kids out of the car. One the way home we stopped off at a charming restaurant called the Black Forest - a very old-school German chalet complete with a cuckoo clock, mounted trophy heads of deer and elk, and a German-accented proprietor. Andrew and I both had the special - Elk goulash (I kid you not, and it was delicious) - while Jason had saurbraten, Logan had beef stew and Zach had chicken tenders.