We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a wonderful break with your families...
We celebrated Christmas here in Germany with our little family, then flew back home to the US for a wonderful visit with family and friends!
We loved, loved, loved, loved, L O V E D getting to explore the different Christmas markets near us...it was so fun to walk around, shop, explore, and drink glühwein or two! How I had never heard of this delicious mulled wine is beyond me...I mean, if I get nothing else out of this entire experience I've been introduced to glühwein so I feel OK.
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| My mom was here when the markets began just after Thanksgiving. Our German tutor was so sweet and offered to take us to one in Ravensburg one afternoon/evening. |
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| My mom and I enjoying some glühwein in Lindau sans kids. |
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| We went back to Ravensburg another afternoon with friends to check out their special children's bakery where the kids got to make and decorate their own cookies. |
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| Waffles with powdered sugar at a Christmas market is a totally acceptable meal in my book when Chris is out of town...No-one was complaining |
Allie and Michael participated in their schools Christmas program and it was SO COOL to see them up there with everyone singing...we may not have understood a thing that was being said (hopefully we won't be saying that next year!!) Chris and I were BEAMING watching them...they were having so much fun...it was really awesome to see!!
The video (and sound!) quality isn't the best, I apologize.. but you get the idea. It was super cute to see our little American kids singing their hearts out in German.
We went right back to our apartment after this and kicked off our winter break. We had a super low key Christmas Eve just hanging out, baking cookies for Santa and making pizza that night while we watch a Christmas movie.
Christmas morning was so fun this year, and I hope I always remember the image our all four kids walking into our room in a single file line to wake us up. I'm not sure how many more years we'll have "believers" in the house...Allie will be 9 in March so I'm guessing we're on borrowed time with her and the whole "Santa" thing.
Santa brought sleds for everyone, as well as new backpacks for Allie and Michel. The kids here have these HUGE backpacks and our kids have had their eyes on them since they started school...I could not bring myself to purchase them, but when they asked Santa for one guilt totally got the best of us and we caved. It's amazing how something so small can mean so much, but they really wanted to have the same kind of backpack as everyone else.
We had breakfast, then packed up for our road trip to Frankfurt. We flew out of Frankfurt the morning of the 26th and decided to drive the 4 hours (well, 5 hours if you're the Bailey family and need to add a 40 minute pit stop into the mix because #kids) on the 25th and stay at a hotel at the airport. In hindsight, flying out of Frankfurt did save us quite a bit, but it was SO BUSY...and having to drive the 4 hours back home after our overnight return flight was not something any of us were excited about...seriously, Chris is a rockstar. I passed out in the car and he got us all home in record time.
We're back to school and I'm trying to use to start of a new year to really get into a more structured schedule and routine...I feel like our first few months here just about survival and "figuring it all out"...we still have A LOT to figure out, don't get me wrong, but I want to keep the momentum moving and make this experience as positive as possible for our family!
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