White Christmas

The sky was a clear, bright blue banner reaching overhead, as two cars slowly drove down the main street of the picturesque skiing village of Stowe, Vermont.  It was the day before Christmas, and after a quick stop in the town's general store to stock up on warm woollens, the two cars, carrying 6 people, wound toward the top of a mountain on a road lined with pine trees covered in snow, and glistening in the bright light.  At the top, the six people climbed into a red wooden sleigh behind two Belgian horses that pulled the riders through the snow-covered fields  in the bracing cold as they huddled beneath the blankets and sang a round of Jingle Bells before taking us back to the lodge run by the family whose escape from Nazi-occupied Austria became the musical A Sound of Music.

In a two-horse open sleigh in Stowe, Vermont

It sounds like a movie, doesn't it?  This was Christmas 2011.  Because when you are in Vermont and it's Christmas, you get to do things like that.

Like a postcard, Stowe, Vermont on Christmas Eve

I can't tell you how happy that I was when I stepped out of the Burlington airport to find it snowing after a week when we'd been told a white Christmas wasn't in the cards.  The snow let us do the sleigh ride at the Trapp Family Lodge (you would know their story best as the Von Trapps) above Stowe, Vermont and inspired a trip to the ice skating rink on top of the more traditional holiday celebrations of presents, home cooked turkey dinner and an evening of board games.

Downtown Stowe is decked out in its holiday finest

Our sleigh ride gave us a beautiful view of the winter wonderland of Vermont's Green Mountains

I escaped an hour and a half of ice skating without my butt meeting the ice even once.  Success!

The only thing missing was my better half, an absence I felt acutely on this holiday so centered around family.  Our decision for separate Christmases was predicated on the fact that we wanted to save Troy's vacation time for when we get the call that a new family member is joining us.  It is my sincerest intentions that this was the first and last time we are spending Christmas apart.

After so much excitement, it's good to be home again.