Recap: Christmas Eve (Dec. 24, 2008)

Oh dear. So, we are trying to recap until the present, although we are definitely not keeping up. Nothing like a six month break when we were already six months behind. Apparently this is Christmas Eve, 2008. Reese running for some reason...
Bunch of Christmas pictures, all special with their own stories:

Here's Reesey holding up the catch of the day (a nice walleye):

Christmas Day 2008 up next!

Jeff and Jodi

Recap: Christmas Activities (Dec. 7-23, 2008)

The two weeks before Christmas we went to the Freiburg Weinachtsmarkt, made lots of cookies, and tried our hands at plenty of Christmas crafts (thanks Mom S. and Lesley). So, we thought we would detail some of the highlights. First up, completely unrelated to Christmas - fingerpainting. Well, actually fingerpainting cleanup. The soupy pictures the kids made took a few days to dry on the wintergarten. Reese liked his sink bath:

Now on to the cookies. Check out the intense concentration from Reese. He is very proficient at dusting a Russian teacake with icing sugar:

Jodi saw a picture of Jolayne E.'s little girl Emma with a cute little craft that we had to copy. It was a hit and Erika enjoyed her fluffy big snowman:

At the Freiburg Christmas market, Heitzmann (the local bakery we spend half of my pay cheque at) had a booth set up and in the back you could pay three euros to decorate and bake gingerbread cookies. They did a really good job and Erika had so much fun. We really got our money's worth (no joke) with this one:

Reese enjoyed Erika's finished products (and he got a hat too):Erika really loved the foam gingerbread house that Lesley sent over. It was a really neat craft, although required a huge amount of patience and persistence on Jodi's part to get the thing to stand up, but the decorating was fun. It even had a musical pushbutton that played non-stop Jingle Bells thanks to Erika:

My Mom sent over a gingerbread house with all the candies and icing to decorate it. Jodi decided this year to just let the kids do what they wanted to do with the decorating:

Voila, the end product of a 3-year-old's imagination and the hands of a mother holding back the tides of two sugar-infused kids while trying to ice the house. The back side was Reese's, and it was equally as cute.

Jodi had an idea (or flashback) of a craft - the foam ball snowman. So, we brought out the pipecleaners and threw together some pretty handsome snowmen. Erika needed to have a backpack and purse on hers:

Reese didn't have any major requests for accessories, but, boy was he proud of his snow man:

You can see in the background in the above picture too that we hung some lights out on the wintergarten. I wanted to ducktape them everywhere but was constrained to the wintergarten windows only. Baby steps, next year the invasion begins...

Jodi and Jeff

Recap: St. Nicolaus (Dec. 12, 2008)

There is a tradition in Germany about St. Nick. He doesn't come at Christmas, but he comes on the 12th (at least he did this year). Kids clean their shoes and put them outside and St. Nick fills them with walnuts and chocolate. He also visited the kindergartens where they had stockings and received walnuts and chocolate. It's a really cute tradition that I think we will try to keep up on even after we come back. Erika really enjoyed it, Reesey didn't quite get it, but enjoyed the chocolate in the morning. Here's old Mr. Double Dipper and sister sitting by their shoes just outside our door (the lovely blue door):

This movie correctly displays Reese's state of mind over the whole procedure (especially the last ten seconds):

The only thing we will change for next year is we will get a nutcracker rather than have Jodi smash the walnuts with a hammer. Worked fine, but perhaps a touch dangerous for the kids holding the walnuts.

Jodi and Jeff