The winter weather is finally catching up to us. As I write this we are currently anticipating 3-5 inches of snow on Friday and I'm scrambling to make alternative arrangements for the ice skating birthday party my daughter has planned.

But the good news is we just posted our Indoor Activity Guide with over 45 articles listing free places to play, story times all over the city, drop-in play spaces, mommy and me classes, off-the-beaten track museums and free museum programs, and even some crafts and activity ideas to help fill those days when you do stay home. This guide will be a permanent feature on the site and be updated with new activities throughout the year, so you can check back any time, whether it's too cold, too hot, or too wet to play outside.  

So, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Earlier in the week we wrote about some of the outrageous Christmas light displays on houses around NYC. But, here are some places to see more traditional Holiday Light Shows:

Santa and technology are not two things that immediately seem to go together. Santa has been the ultimate luddite; 1500 years old and he never even upgraded to a motorized vehicle, for pete's sake. But this year Santa is getting his geek on with some fun hi-tech tools and social media solutions that bring the jolly old elf to life for kids.

Check out how technology has upgraded Santa Claus this year:

I've been quoted in a couple of cool articles recently that I think you might find interesting. Two of them are about saving money during the Holidays or when traveling, and the third is about Holiday charities. Check out what other people are writing about on some topics near and dear to me:

Some of my favorite holiday events are this weekend: All those wacky events in our Off-Beat and Multicultural Holiday Events post are all this weekend. So if you missed that check it out here. And if you haven't taken a look at our round-up of the best Nutcracker performances for kids, find that post here.

Below we've picked out just the cream of the crop of other cool events for this weekend, where we think you'll find something new and interesting for the whole family.

This site is dedicated to helping parents find all the amazing, cool, once-in-a-lifetime events that you don't have to spend a fortune to take advantage of, but there are some events that are worth the splurge. A Night at the Museum Sleepover is one of them and would make a terrific Holiday Gift.

The American Museum of Natural History invites families to spend a night exploring the museum after everyone else has gone home and camp out in one of the exhibit halls. My daughter was lucky enough to be invited to do this with a friend who received the sleepover as a gift. What an amazing present! And they had such a great time.

I recently wrote about how to find charity activities you can do with your kids. I like the fact that there are some organizations that make volunteering fun and feel not that different than any activity you might do with your children, but for a good cause. I just found out about one such event this weekend: A charity knit-off for teens and tweens.

Wow! This was a really fun and super popular giveaway event. We gave away over $2000 worth of prizes, my inbox is completely jammed with all of your entries and I've gotten lots of nice comments from your friends, who are happy to have learned about the site, so thank you for sharing it with them. And, welcome to our new readers.  

But here's what you really want to know... Who won!