Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas!!! Happy Birthday Jesus!!! We had a very quiet Christmas this year. The first one we have been at our own house in our whole married life. We had some wonderful friends over for dinner on the 24th. I cooked a turkey for the second time ever. Crazy huh? Jeff helped me infuse it and it turned out really good!! I was thoroughly impressed!! After dinner we played some cards and relaxed. Poor Michael was running a pretty good fever but was in good spirits nonetheless. He is a tough guy! Our friends left around 6 pm and we just relaxed the rest of the evening. Michael was more than ready for bed when it was time! AJ on the other hand, was way too excited!! He came up a few times saying he tried to go to sleep, but just couldn't. So I let him read for about an hour before he finally calmed down enough to go to sleep. It was so cute!!! The excitement was great!!

 

The kids table!!!

 

The adult table!  David finally graduated!!!  LOL

 

Michael wanted a picture with me!  So cute even when not feeling good!

 

AJ and Michael chose which cookies to leave out for Santa and wanted to leave vanilla milk this time.

 

Our Christmas tree with all hand made ornaments (except the star on top) ready for Christmas morning.

 

 

 

So Christmas morning I come down stairs and I find Michael on the couch watching a show - not evening looking behind the couch where all the presents are.  AJ was good and stayed down stairs.

 

Even without the cousins here I made them sing Jingle Bells - it is tradition after all!!  They did a great job also!

 

Digging into their stockings!!

 

Michael said when he put the two candy canes together and they made a heart.  He is such a sweet kid!

 

The boys helped pass out the presents and had to have the Seahawk Santa hat on - he was very excited!

 

AJ had the Cougar Santa hat on and was shaking one of his presents to see if he could figure out what was in it.  He did a great job of passing out the presents.

 

The boys opening up their presents together - they wanted to do their joint presents first :-)

 

 

David showing off some of his new gear!  It was a little cold on Christmas and rainy - but we braved it any way because the boys wanted to try out their new skateboards that Santa brought them

 

AJ was getting pretty good at it, Michael is working on it also

 

The boys trying out another one of their new toys

 

This is where the boys were for quite a bit of the day putting together Legos!!!  They had a great time!  Michael was putting together a new Lego game that we played later that day.  It was a really great, quiet day that was just the four of us.  We enjoyed each others company greatly.  Not to say we didn't miss hanging with our family though.  I hope and pray that everybody had such a wonderful Christmas!! 

The Weekend

On Friday AJ had a pajama Polar Express party at school.  Michael had his school in the morning and then we both put our PJs on and went directly to AJ's class.  There we took a ride on the Polar Express!!  They had hot chocolate with marshmallows with a candy cane to stir it!  The kids had a wonderful time!!!  Mrs. Richardson was nice enough to let Michael join to.  So again we ended up staying the whole time.  Michael went to host nation with AJ (his special and the one AJ doesn't like very much) and was able to celebrate with them!!  So far Michael has gone to every special AJ has except music.  We haven't been there on one of those days yet :-)

 

All of them watching the Polar Express

 

The boys enjoying hot chocolate and cookies while watching the movie.

 

The boys were soooo excited to give Mrs. Richardson her gifts!!

 

She LOVED them too!!!!

 

On Saturday afternoon AJ and I went bowling and had lunch just the two of us.  He was a little jealous of the time that Michael and I get to spend together while he was at school.  So Michael stayed with David and AJ and I went off just the two of us!!  We had a WONDERFUL time!!!  I did win both games, but AJ learned a great lesson.  He said it is okay to lose as long as you do your best.  I am glad he figured that out earlier than later.  Not that I want him to lose always, but not be really upset when he does.

 

 

Aren't we cute???

 

 

Then on Saturday evening, our neighbors invited us to go ice skating with them.  This is the first time the boys have been on real ice for ice skating.  We did Arizona ice skating on plastic things, but this was a little different.  They both had a great time!!!!  Michael was really tired because he got up WAY too early in the morning so he didn't last as long.  But AJ was a champ and by the end of the session he was skating all around the rink without holding on!!  We were very proud of him!!  It reminded me a lot of roller skating when I was in middle school.  There were a lot of teenagers there and you could totally tell the boys were showing off for the girls.  It was kind of funny!!  And they were bringing the 80s back, lots of 80s clothes there that night.  :-)

 

 

These penguins were for kids that were just learning to skate to push along.  It was very helpful at the beginning for them to get the hang of it.

 

 

We were getting warm from all that skating and had to take the coats off.

 

So I had to take a picture of this, the ice skating rink is at the dinosaur park and T-Rex is ready for Christmas in his Christmas hat!!  We were going to go to the Christmas market, but it was raining really hard.  So we headed home, had some dinner and then went to our neighbors for some hot chocolate and beer for the older boys.  It was a wonderful evening.

Today at church the boys sang a couple of Christmas songs.  They are in Shining Stars and it was really cute!!  They do love this church and I am so glad!!!  Now it is back to my baking, trying to get the rest of it done before midnight tonight!  I hope everybody is traveling safe and we miss you all this Christmas!!!!

Christmas Traditions

On Tuesday of this week AJ had his first concert.  They had a winter concert called The Big Chill.  He sang with the kindergarten and 1st grades.  It was the elementary school that did it so up through 5th grade.  It was so cute and AJ was soooooooooooo excited to sing in it.  They had two songs and then the big finale.  He said he had to wear his shirt and tie for the concert and he looked very smashing in it!  He did a great job and we were very proud of him for getting up in front of all those people and singing.

 

As you can see AJ is still heads above the rest of his class.  It makes it easy to spot him!

 

I told Michael's teachers that I would love to help out in class a little one day.  I made cupcakes and gingerbread cookies with them earlier in the year and they said that we could make cookies with them again.  So I am a glutton for punishment and said sure!!  I would love to.  So on Wednesday I went into his class and made sugar cookies with them. 

 

 

Each kid gets a turn to stir the dough and put in the ingredients.  It is actually really neat!!  So if they don't get any cooking time with their parents, at least they get a little here.  They each were able to cut out two cookies.  The only problem was after they were cooked, with the cookie trays they were on they stuck to the pan.  We wrecked a few of them, but still got enough whole ones off for the kids to decorate

 

Another Mom and her Mom came in and did some Christmas ornaments.  The kids had a busy day!!

 

Michael is very pleased with his frosted cookies!!! 

 

Then on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon the boys and I did our traditional Christmas cookie baking.  We baked on Wednesday and frosted on Thursday.  Had to get it in between activities and school.  It was a lot of fun and AJ was especially a big help in making the cookies and cutting them out.   Michael didn't want to cut them out, but was into frosting them. 

 

Here they are stirring the frosting.  They were so cute and nice, they were taking turns and making sure the other person had their turn!!  It was a proud mama moment.

 

 

Here is AJ, not sure if he was trying to decorate or just eating the sprinkles  :-)

 

 

Michael is explaining to me what he is going to do when decorating the cookie!

 

AJ is engrossed in making sure the sprinkles go in the exact spot he wants them.  All in all they did really good in decorating them, we made a lot and they stayed with me for an hour and fifteen minutes.  AJ stayed with me a little longer, but not much.  It took over two hours to decorate all of the cookies.  The boys were waiting for me to finish because what they really wanted to do was lick the bowls and spoons of frosting.  They were a little disappointed because there wasn't much left after decorating all of the cookies.

 

Here is our finished products!  They made sure I knew which ones are for Santa and which ones are for their teachers.  And of course which ones are for them!!  We have enjoyed passing them out and eating some!

Weisbaden Christmas Market

Well I figured I better get on here what we did last weekend before this weekend gets going.  :-)  On Saturday we woke up to beautiful sunshine here in Kaiserslautern, but was told by a friend it was raining in Wiesbaden.  We decided to take a chance anyway and headed down there.  It is about an hour drive to get there.  It was a beautiful drive and when we got there no rain.  The only problem is that we didn't have a GPS coordinate to get us to where we wanted to go and I was only there once, but had Amber with me to navigate.  Well it took us a little time but we finally got there!  We walked through a park (because we had to park so far away) and the lake was frozen.  It was really funny because we watched the ducks landing on the ice and they slid quite a ways before they stopped.  The boys thought it was hilarious!!!  We also had to go to the bathroom and there was one there, but it cost .50 euro to use it.  That is one thing that I have learned is to always carry some spare euro to be able to use the restroom.  Most places you have to pay to use the bathrooms.  So we made it to the market and it was a really nice one.  There were tons of booths that had all sorts of items for sale.  We enjoyed walking through it and looking at everything.  We all found something we liked and of course I got my gluwhien cup!!  There are also some beautiful buildings there, we will have to go back and really take a good look at them but they were spectacular to look at!  There were also rides there so the boys went on a couple of them.  Michael was ready to go home a little before we were, but he survived with a shoulder ride from Daddy. 

 

This was the walkway by the park - David and I thought the trees where really neat

 

This is the central building in the downtown area - it is called Marktkirche.  When the old church was damaged in 1850 they decided on this new church to be built in a neo-gothic style. 

 

This is a view that you see when you walk down the booths of the market.  It was so crowded that you had to go with the flow sometimes and couldn't stop.  It was amazing how many people were there.

 

The other side of the church

 

The cotton candy is bigger than both their heads together!!  But they sure enjoyed it!!

 

They had a HUGE nativity scene there, it was carved out of wood and really gorgeous!

 

This was a double decker merry go round, you can just see AJ's head on the left side.

 

There was also a train ride - so of course they wanted to ride it!!  I figured since they were dragged around shopping that they could have a little fun :-)

 

Starting to get dark and it is so pretty when everything is lit up, this is on the other side of the market.  They almost always have two of these

 

I had to get one with it lit up in front of the church!

 

This was a theatre there, the architecture is amazing.

 

The sun setting as we were walking back to the car

 

here are the ducks walking on the ice

 

There is a full view of the pond, partially frozen over with some fog starting to lift

 

This one is kind of dark being this late, but the boys are trying to destroy the big snowballs!

 

Look out!!!!

 

Boys- gotta love them.  Those were their big purchases from the market. 

 

After the market we came on home and had dinner with some great friends at the Macaroni Gill on base.  It was pretty good, I have never eaten at one before in the states or out.  Our friends wanted an American steak.  It is really interesting, but the German meat is a lot different than the American meat.  If you are in a German club or sport on the economy and they have a BBQ they usually ask the Americans to bring the hot dogs, buns and the processed foods like Oreo's and such.  The processed foods are really expensive for them, one box of Oreo's cost them around $7 American.  They also say they like our steaks better.  All in all it was a wonderful day!!!!