Thursday, December 29, 2011

Last Christmas in Germany

We leave Germany in exactly one month!  Which means we move out of our house in about 2 weeks.  Yikes!  There is so much to do!  I'm trying to stay calm about everything and not worry too much.  Next week we're planning on shipping my car.  That will be a little hard going without a car but I'd rather have it in Texas sooner than up to the last minute here.  It generally takes 5-8 weeks for a car to ship overseas.

Our last Christmas in Germany was very nice.  Christmas Eve we cooked our traditional Christmas meal, beef tenderloin and this year our sides were mashed potatoes and green beans.  I made a spinach dip and served it with carrots, tomatoes, and crackers for the appetizer.  For dessert we made cream brulee.  We invited one of Collin's co-workers over for dinner and had a nice time getting to know him better.  All of us, except for Caden, stayed up pretty late talking.  Caden got to open two presents on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day we woke up early.  Caden came down stairs and opened the rest of his gifts.  We rushed off to church, which starts at 8:30am, and brought a wonderful couple, Doug and Lynne James, home with us to eat a Christmas lunch.  I mainly heated up Christmas Eve dinner since I knew with church there wouldn't be a lot of time to cook.  We also made a pumpkin pie because we knew our friends liked that dessert.  I had never had pumpkin pie before and I really liked it.  Later that day we made our annual ginger bread house.  Caden LOVED eating all the candy we used to decorate it.  He has never had that much candy in his life.  Of course he didn't have any candy until this past Halloween and he became hooked.  Not good.  Ha!

We love Christmas and celebrating the birth of Jesus.  The last 4 Christmases we have spent in Germany and we will miss this time of year here.  However, we are looking forward to coming home to Texas and spending future holidays with family there.  We were hoping it would snow this year on Christmas, but it didn't.  On the other hand, we were blessed with some sunshine which was nice and somewhat rare this time of year.  Now I'm hoping snow will wait until we're out of our house since some of our furniture will have to be moved via our upstairs balcony and if it snows or is raining it will make it more challenging.  Also, I'm more of a summer/spring/fall girl, than a cold, wet, snowy winter girl.  I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas!

All ready for Christmas Morning!

Merry Christmas!

Opening his first gift on Christmas Eve

Family picture before church - Caden was still in his pjs

Playing with his new train set
Christmas Day lunch
Doug and Lynne
Family picture before lunch
Playing with new toys
Making our ginger bread house
This year's ginger bread house!
 
 

No comments: