Note: See pictures separately to follow.
Merry Christmas to all-and Happy New year too - We are still here and determined to blog more and better! Casey and Katie are here for Christmas and Casey has been taking care of all our computer needs, we have a new computer and lap-top and soon wireless access all through the house!
Merry Christmas to all-and Happy New year too - We are still here and determined to blog more and better! Casey and Katie are here for Christmas and Casey has been taking care of all our computer needs, we have a new computer and lap-top and soon wireless access all through the house!
We have Stephanie and Curt, Casey and Katie and Elsa here with us and it's been wonderful and crazy. We are trying to get Curt to eat every favorite European food we can think of, he is doing well in keeping up with it all. We decided we need to fatten him and Stephie up a bit while they are here. Curt's bags took a few days to catch up to him, that was fun for him to borrow clothes from people 4-5 inches shorter- luckily the waist sizes here fit him somewhat. Curt and Stephanie went in work to watch Rich do a C-section and Curt decided that delivering babies is cool after all! Rich took all the guys running and they all survived- though he keeps suggesting longer and longer runs.
Curt has been teaching Erik new ways to take care of the gophers in our backyard. We have some things to put down the holes that buzz and make annoying noises to scare them away that have worked in the past so I gave then the assignment to place the annoying noise makers. Curt decided they could do much better than that and soon they were digging down into the holes and dropping gas soaked rags, next came the fire, and before you know it we had 7-8 fires burning in various holes and some pretty happy boys! Erik thinks having brothers around is pretty fun. I just hope the gophers stay away!
Elsa is crawling all over and has- after a week- gotton over her jet lag and is sleeping mostly thru the night. She is enjoying all the attention and is the most happy wonderful baby. She is having fun trying to catch Jack. We will even get to celebrate her first birthday this week.
We have done our traditional Christmas activities like going to the Christmas eve program at the church around the corner, it's amazing to think that they have been having a Christmas eve service there for over 200 years,-- now that is tradition! It's a tiny church and they sing hymns, have the kids act out the Christmas story, sing again and then go home. We really enjoy starting our Christmas eve festivities that way. We had our family program complete with Scott's yearly rendition of "The Night before Christmas" Every year he manages to get all the family events into the peom and delights us all. The gopher burning was featured this year, much to the delight of the boys doing the burning. We finished up with our live tree with candles on it. Christmas day was nice with leisurely gift opening, it's sure different having older kids who would rather sleep in on Christmas day! Anne wasn't too happy about that idea but went along OK.
On the 26th we had our annual gingerbread house competition, with Elizabeth and Scott even joining in with their own "remote entry" We called grandma and grandpa to judge and had a great time. We celebrated Anne's 12th birthday a day early and the girls pampered her big time. They taught her all about doing her hair and make-up and gave her hands on training in shaving her legs! Every thing a young woman needs to know. Anneliese is very excited about leaving primary behind and moving up to Young Women and can even attend a New Year's youth activity this week.
On the 27th, we celebrated Anneliese's birthday by going to Il Pirata. She had her normal margarita pizza and the rest of the kids had the likes of gnocci, etc. Wonderful times. We managed to NOT get the plum wine at the end of the meal, so that was cool!
On the 28th of December we celebrated officially the turning of the last child to the ripe age of 12. She is now not in Primary, which she has been secretly sluffing for the last several weeks/ month already anyway! We split into two groups on the 28th-- the children being led by Casey went to Oberammergau to stay at the NATO School while Mom and I worked the 28th. On the 29th, the kids went to Neuschwanstein, Hohenschwangau and Wieskirche. We met up with them and had pizza that night from the Italian place around the corner (Scott and Elizabeth will remember). Next day the kids went to Zugspitze skiing and had a wonderful time. It was wonderful COLD weather. Dad stayed with Elsa Jean and Anne. Dad has crossed over into the non-skier relm given his previous shoulder mishaps. The 31st we travelled home again.
On the 31st we had a wonderful New Years celebration out front shooting off 60 Euros worth of fireworks with the neighbors, we had the whole town lite up. It was very cool. Curt was duely impressed with European New Years traditions.
Next day, we moved attic storage stuff from one to the other in preparation of the hopeful moving in of Casey and Katie into our attic. 2nd we went to the Flea market at Homburg and FROZE, but got some very cool additions to our own personal collection of flea items in our Gimsbacher olde house.
3rd, we went to Hambachtal swimming and to Thairama in Kaiserslautern and finally the 4th, we had to deliver the children all to the airport where they flew away much to our sadness. All in all, we had a wonderful visit and loved every second of it. It would only have been better had we had the whole crew home.
On the 27th, we celebrated Anneliese's birthday by going to Il Pirata. She had her normal margarita pizza and the rest of the kids had the likes of gnocci, etc. Wonderful times. We managed to NOT get the plum wine at the end of the meal, so that was cool!
On the 28th of December we celebrated officially the turning of the last child to the ripe age of 12. She is now not in Primary, which she has been secretly sluffing for the last several weeks/ month already anyway! We split into two groups on the 28th-- the children being led by Casey went to Oberammergau to stay at the NATO School while Mom and I worked the 28th. On the 29th, the kids went to Neuschwanstein, Hohenschwangau and Wieskirche. We met up with them and had pizza that night from the Italian place around the corner (Scott and Elizabeth will remember). Next day the kids went to Zugspitze skiing and had a wonderful time. It was wonderful COLD weather. Dad stayed with Elsa Jean and Anne. Dad has crossed over into the non-skier relm given his previous shoulder mishaps. The 31st we travelled home again.
On the 31st we had a wonderful New Years celebration out front shooting off 60 Euros worth of fireworks with the neighbors, we had the whole town lite up. It was very cool. Curt was duely impressed with European New Years traditions.
Next day, we moved attic storage stuff from one to the other in preparation of the hopeful moving in of Casey and Katie into our attic. 2nd we went to the Flea market at Homburg and FROZE, but got some very cool additions to our own personal collection of flea items in our Gimsbacher olde house.
3rd, we went to Hambachtal swimming and to Thairama in Kaiserslautern and finally the 4th, we had to deliver the children all to the airport where they flew away much to our sadness. All in all, we had a wonderful visit and loved every second of it. It would only have been better had we had the whole crew home.
1 comment:
I don't know how you could have fit more into the time than you did. It sounds like a great Christmas. I enjoyed the pictures and yes Anna does looked older and well on her way to becoming a beautiful young women. Congrats to her to be out of primary. That last year can be hard.
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