The girls and I made a variety of ornaments for our little table-top tree that we got. (Thank you, Pinterest, for the bead idea! Although a hint to use plastic cookie cutters rather than metal would've been helpful.)
This is about the most snow we've gotten. We did get one mini-snowfall and the girls went out with Grammy to build a snowman, but he was already gone by morning.
Look how tall he's getting! (He still loves that fish!)
Getting ready to make some homemade wrapping paper.
G has been learning about equations. I made a little math crossword puzzle for her, and she got every single one right. (Smarty pants.)
Tunnel time!
Yes, I'm eating an entire bowl of cookie dough while doodling on Pinterest. So what.
One of the many Christkindlmarkts around Munich:
Amazingly, Grammy defeated jetlag and was still up and alert at dinner time. We chowed down at Mil's - our favorite neighborhood restaurant. The girls are teaching Grammy how to play tic-tac-toe while we wait for our food.
E must've been channeling her jetlag, because he couldn't even manage one rice cake.
E got pneumonia over the holidays. Started off as bronchitis and then just never went away. The nurse at the pediatrician's office traumatized him with a facemask for a breathing treatment, so we opted for a mouthpiece, which he happily puffed away on 3 times a day until he was better (also thanks to some antibiotics.)
H took his mom to Salzburg for the Christkindlmarkt there:
Here's the church that E and I hiked up to when the family went to the salt mine several months ago. The perspective of this shot doesn't nearly do the altitude of that building justice! It was WAY UP THERE! (The driveway I had growing up was steep. The road leading to the church was way steeper and was about 1/2 mile straight up.)
H and Martha (aka Grammy) getting ready for the salt mine tour.
The top of the slide during the salt mine tour:
Austian/German border underground.
The Christkindlmarkt at the Chinese Tower in the heart of the English Garden in Munich:
Christmas wouldn't be the same without sugar cookies and an afternoon of decorating:
E supervised the decorating process - I think he had visions of sugarplums dancing in his head ... and hopes of eating said cookies.
It was of course E's first Christmas:
The barn below opens up and has a pond, a swan, some livestock and hay bales. Aunt Catherine added to the set with a tractor and a truck. The dolls are E's favorites -- he attacks them with juicy kisses and squeals of giddiness.
This turned out way better than I expected -- not quite as bad as a Charlie Brown tree afterall. The Thankful Tree from Thanksgiving is a bit sparse as we spent most of that season back in the States.
This is Ms. Laura - our next door neighbor. A wonderful lady, who has more or less adopted us.
The tree behind us is from Berchtesgaden, as are all the handmade wooden ornaments. Yes, those are real candles on the tree. (Amazingly, we didn't catch the thing on fire with the 3 little ones crawling and jumping around...)
Josie and Krista are Laura's son and daughter-in-law (who also live next door in another apartment), and they, too, have adopted us. Dear, dear people. Josie is the one who pops through the fence in the summer to bring the girls bowls of homemade ice cream, and provides us with crates and crates of fresh fruit off his trees. I hope we can stay in touch with them after we move back home.
Painting princesses. This one is destined for Ms. Tamara ...
... and this one for Ms. Elizabeth :)
Papa has a hard time staying awake before noon, now that he's been off work for 2 weeks. The girls are cuddled up with him while G tells one of her many, many stories of Pink Fluffy Girl.
This morning, G dressed up in one of her nightgowns, a purse, a wallet, and her fancy Chinese fan, pipe cleaners attached to her ears as ear rings, and exclaimed, "I'm a proper lady!"
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