We are lucky to have family traditions that my kids, as young as they are, anticipate with excitement and energy only young children can bring. With the holidays upon us everyone has traditions on their mind, and when you have a new generation of children the traditions of old often get a little shaken up. Just one man’s opinion, but that’s not just OK, it is great!
One of the many new traditions the Napolitano clan enjoys every year is an annual weekend trip to Stowe, VT in December as a kickoff to the winter season that includes all my siblings and their kids. It’s awesome to watch my children and all their cousins (8 in total) rambunctiously play together on vacation. They get to experience skiing, skating, swimming while it’s snowing, and sometimes even meet the REAL Santa (since we are so much closer to the North Pole, of course). But to them, the main attraction is the seemingly endless hotel hallways they can sprint through and the “breakfast place” where we enjoy a morning muffin with a view of the mountain.
The Village at Spruce Peak is a true winter wonderland. If you have never experienced it yourself, I can’t recommend it enough. There are great restaurants, multiple outdoor fireplaces where the kids make s’mores, pop up snack shacks, and of course a few picture-perfect locations for an après ski beverage that are all centered on a public ice-skating rink. It is a weekend that makes us all look to winter with a little more appreciation – any lifelong New Englander understands that is no small feat.
