I sit in a darkened cafe. About a block away, packs of people are streaming into the San Francisco Opera House as part of a holiday tradition that goes back decades. Dressed up with kids in tow, they are off to see the San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker. I have seen the Nutcracker ever since I was a small child. It was an event that symbolized the holidays for me. Now, it has a different meaning altogether for me, and this year, there has been a car that has really made the difference for me and my family – the 2012 Nissan Quest.

A few weeks ago, I was given the 2012 Nissan Quest to drive for 2 weeks as part of an outreach program to bloggers around the country. We were ask to essentially embark on a “Holiday Quest” and we have been tagging our social activities with the hashtag #HolidayQuest. Nissan kindly donated not only the Quest for two week, but they also are donating $500 to a charity of our choice and provided us with $500 “holiday money” to help us take that hard edge off of the holiday season. And a few days ago, Nissan gave out 5 prizes of $1000 to some lucky Twitterers who participated in a Nissan Quest TweetUp!

For our family, the Quest became our transportation of choice, and boy did we have a lot of driving to do. When I checked the odometer at the end of my 2 weeks, it seems that we have gone almost 1000 miles just around the San Francisco Bay Area and most of the driving has been to holiday-related activities.

We used the Quest to go to holiday piano recitals as well as holiday dances for my younger two daughters. But probably most of the mileage has come from the back and forth from our home to San Francisco Ballet – the reason being, my oldest daughter, who is 12, is performing two roles in the SF Ballet’s Nutcracker, that of a dragonfly and also, the main role of Clara. Clara is the girl in the Nutcracker who receives the toy nutcracker and then has a dream sequence that spans the rest of the performance.

[click to continue…]