Snow, then sleet, then freezing rain, then more snow

It's been a pretty active weather-week over here. We received a solid 12" of snow on Thursday, which caused me to have a 2 hour commute to get back home and we ended up missing J's big company Christmas party on account of the bad roads. Then today we got hit with a ton of sleet, which changed over to pouring freezing rain, and now it's snowing again. Sheesh - never was the popular New England weather phrase "wait a half hour and the weather's bound to change" more apt than today.

But on a brighter note - I love my new car! Actually I love the 4WD in my new car! It was sure put to the test on Thursday when I climbed a massive hill in our neighborhood that was covered with at least 4" of snow. Two other cars were stuck trying to get up, but I had no problems at all. There was no way my old Honda would have been able to get up that hill - go RAV!!

In holiday news - Christmas cards were sent out earlier last week and my Christmas shopping is DONE! Nevermind that - I'm also done wrapping all those gifts! AND my cousin from Canada IS coming down for Christmas! So I'm excited! And Christmas is only about a week away!

I wanted SNOW not ICE!!

This blog has been sitting here rather neglected for the past few weeks, so let me take a few moments during this yucky, icy day to give a quick re-cap of the past week's activities.

First of, Thanksgiving turned out great and all of my stress over planning and preparing for the feast turned out to be well rewarded. I can honestly say that all 15 of us ended that day with full bellies and good cheer. And thanks to my sis-in-law's boyfriend, we even ended the evening with a bang as he set off the last remaining fireworks left over from the summer. The mild evening turned out to be perfect for it. Now I'm wondering if this is going to have to become a new family tradition to have fireworks on Thanksgiving...hmm...

And the very next day I finished cleaning up and went right to work putting up the rest of the Christmas decorations in the dining room. So now we are entirely in the Christmas mode instead of being 1/2 Christmas and 1/2 Thanksgiving!

And to top it all off - I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping! Just one more thing to get for B and his cousin and a few stocking stuffers and that'll be it. Nevermind that, J thinks I've gone completely mental now because not only is my shopping almost done, but I have already finished wrapping everything I have so far! (Only spent an hour and a half to wrap 17 gifts - not bad!) But I do have to give him some credit. He actually started his shopping last week, which is crazy for him since he's usually out there on Christmas Eve still shopping.

Next up - Christmas parties! I'm starting to lose track of how many parties we will be attending this year. At last count I think we were up to 4 not counting one that we are hosting. They range from the extremely informal, beer, wings and a grab bag to the formal company-wide cocktail party. Three of the parties are related to J's work in some way, one is for the Land Trust (which J is now the proud VP of!) and the last one that we will be hosting is a small group gathering for my co-workers. On top of that I offered to host Christmas this year for the family and we started a tradition last year of having a few friends over to ring in the New Year too. Sheesh - I'll need a vacation after all of that! But THAT is why I wanted to get the shopping out of the way early.

And while all of this is going on, I am desperately trying to get my cousin from Ottawa to come down and spend Christmas with us. It would be great if he came down, but right now it's up in the air. And I figure being busy at this time of year won't be too a bad thing. It'll help work off those million or so calories that I'll be inhaling over the next few weeks!