I am a geek

Just so no one thinks that it is all just endless coolness at our house - here was me the other day on the computer, eating breakfast, listening to headphones and doing my hair. Robin laughed and took a picture. I wasn't sure what was so funny until I looked at the picture on the camera a few days later. Wow - I am looking fab! (I think my breakfast looks like a taco... it's not, it is a roll with cheese)

White Christmas

I think there are many people in the world who dream of a white Christmas. Here in Europe we are the ones who won the "white Christmas" lottery this year. We got a LOT of snow. It started snowing Christmas eve day and didn't stop snowing until sometime Christmas morning. We spent Christmas eve at Robin's parent's house. We got home sometime around mid-night. About 12 hours later, we went to their house again. This is how I dressed up to go do battle with the snow.
Please take special notice of the pink rain boots. I hate to get my pants wet in the snow and we had about a foot of snow. The pink boots coved my pants enough that they didn't get wet. They didn't do too much for keeping my feet warm though.This is Robin looking for our car (ok, not really, but I thought the picture was funny).

This was how our car looked. It took several minutes to get the snow off of it enough to drive.Me, hard at work clearing the snow from our headlights.

Ice covered our license plate.... When we finally did get going, our car got stuck getting out of our parking spot. I got out to push (I don't drive well in snow). Luckily, there were 2 men in a car behind us that helped push us out of our spot. After that, we were on our way :)

Nativity

One night for Family Home Evening this month, Robin and I colored and cut out this nativity. I spent a while looking on the internet for nativity puppets and this was what I eventually found. We wanted to somehow use the puppets to act out the nativity, film the "play" and send it to people... well, that didn't all work out, but we had a fun time coloring it.

A year ago today...

A year ago today, Robin and I got engaged... it all started on a bench at Mukilteo beach.

:)

Christmas Card

Merry Christmas to all

Christmas Markets - Michaelstadt

I wanted to go to as many Christmas markets as I could this year. So far we have been to 6. Here we are at a Christmas market in the town of Michaelstadt. Michaelstadt is a cute little town about 20 minutes away from us. We took the train though, so it took almost 40 minutes to get there. This market is one of the most popular Christmas markets in the area. The town has a good atmosphere that lends itself nicely to the Christmas spirit. Here is a picture of the town hall:


Lucky for us, it snowed the WHOLE day that day so the town looked really cute with snow all over the fachwerk houses. It was cold too. We had a nice time though. Lots of little booths with all sorts of different things. Lots of tastey little treats too. We bought roasted almonds with a coconut flavor - one of my favorites.

Here is a picture that Robin took of a nice nativity they had at the market.

Now here is an interesting cultural thing - I don't think Santa Claus comes down the chimney in Germany.... You can find figures like this attached to the side of houses here - in this case, Santa is parachuting. Sometimes, it is Santa climbing a latter in to the house. I'm not sure I completely und why, but that is how Santa gets around there - parachuting, climbing in windows, or maybe just walking. Different. When I see one of these things, I usually have a good laugh.

Decking the Halls

We got our tree!

I wanted to get a fake tree, Robin went along with the idea. Call me Scrooge, but I just don't care much for having a real tree in the house... You have to water it (I am a plant-killer and most plants I have had died from lack of water). It drops it needles on the floor and you have to clean it up. I can also live without the "real" tree smell. So, fake tree it is.

Fake trees seem to be a new idea here, which is strange for two reasons. First, Germans are very environmentally friendly - I would think saving a tree and the chance to re-use it year after year would be right up their alley. Secondly, there are tons of fake trees in the stores - I seem to be the only one buying them though.

We brought our tree home on Saturday. I unpacked it and put it together. Robin put the lights on. I put on all the decorations I brought from the US and our tree was ready to go. I'm not sure these pictures do it justice - it looks pretty cute for our first Christmas tree. :)

Once there was a snow man...

It snowed. I hate snow... but what can you do when life gives you snow? Make a snow man. We didn't have much snow on our balcony, so my snow man is mini-sized. I used matches for the arms, a piece of orange peel for the nose, and permanent marker to draw on eyes. Sadly, my snowman didn't last very long. He began to melt about 4 hours after I made him... he melted small, small, small....

Christmas Decorations

Time for Christmas decorations! I made these puff balls to hang in the window. In the top picture, you can see them hanging. Since taking that picture I have added a bigger one in the middle. The second picture is a close-up of the puff ball. I wanted multi-colored puff balls. It took some thought, but I figured out how to do it just the way I wanted. I think they look pretty good.