After spending New Years with my family I traveled to Cape Cod to visit with Kristina's family. I had Marie along for company, which is a good thing as it took nearly 10 hours to get there (3 more than normal). This was mainly due to horrible horrible traffic along I-95 in Connecticut. They had these nice signs that would tell you in advance where and for how long each backup was. Useful, but it's annoying they can detect the backups but can't seem to do anything about them. Add in a major backup in Providence, and then me getting off an exit too early and having to drive through Buzzards Bay, it took much longer than it should have to get there.

There was major snow all along the East Coast except in Maryland. So I had to travel to the cape to get snow:
Cape Cod Snow
We had a fun time visiting, although it involved a bit more time stuck in a fabric store than I typically like to spend. But Kristina's sister got a nice hand-made cloak out of the deal.

We went to the snowy beach. My real hat was accidentally left in Marie's car so I had to wear my warm but silly looking Russian hat:
Vince looking like an idiot

We all were bundled up, as it was quite cold.
Bundled on the Beach

For New Years we traveled up to Clinton to visit my friend John. We ate snack food, played an extremely long game of "Apples to Apples" and watched the New Years celebrations on TV.

At first night Worcester they had children write down their hopes, dreams, and wishes for the near year on pieces of wood. Then they gathered them up... and burned them. Symbolic, though maybe not in the way the organizers intended.
Back to Vince's Winter Break