We're all back in Columbus now, and it's finally really snowing. But I get ahead of myself.

The drive back was pretty uneventful. We had a pretty fun night in Birmingham surprisingly. After driving past at least 50 in our travels, we were unable to resist the call of Cracker Barrel and had a ridiculously huge dinner there. After that we decided to visit the Vulcan statue (sadly not Star Trek related), which in hindsight probably wasn't exactly smart, seeing as it was a cold and particularly windy night. The statue has this little observation deck wrapped around it, and we went up there to look out at the city lights. Of course, we didn't much notice the lights, as we were too busy fighting the wind that was trying to pick us up off the rickety wire mesh floor and throw us over the seemingly too-short railing. We lasted about a minute before we decided to head back down.

On our second day of driving, we started seeing snow in the fields as soon as we passed Cincinnati, but there was a disappointing lack of it in Columbus. Christmas Eve and Day were spent quietly playing Wii, hiding from the cold and eating fajitas. A successful holiday.

We ventured out the day after Christmas to do a little bit of shopping. I was pretty disappointed with the sales, overall, but we did pick up a Christmas tree for really cheap. We went ahead and set it up to see what it looks like, so now we have a post-Christmas tree, decorated with the two ornaments we own. It's awesome.

Then, today, the snow came! It was nice and sunny, around 40 degrees, earlier, but something changed around dinnertime and it just started coming down. By the time I looked out the window around 9, everything was covered. Like so.

And it's gotten even deeper since I took those. After a while, I decided to go out with Bean and let him explore a little bit. And I took videos, because pictures just couldn't convey the cuteness. The first ones are from earlier in the night, in the back yard, and then the last one is around 10 when everything was covered. They consist of Bean being alternately fascinated and scared by the snow, attacking my boots because of the sound they were making and learning that snow is just water you can eat.