aaron.anica.emily.isabel.claire

Christmas 2016 Bernkastel-Kues Christmas morning Our Christmas was a little different this year, or I guess a lot different because of being in a different country and far away from the family and friends we love. We celebrated about a week and a half early because Emily went to spend Christmas with her other family and Aaron had to work on Christmas. Emily left the day after the girls' last day of school, so when they came home from school we opened presents from each other and then by popular vote spent the rest of the night eating pizza and bowling at the bowling alley on base. The next day we woke up early to deliver Em to the airport. We were able to hit a couple of Christmas Markets in the beginning weeks of December with her and then we did a couple after she left. We thought it was kind of fun how each Christmas Market has their own mug that you can collect, so the collecting motivated Aaron a little more to hit multiple markets rather than to just stay ho...

Heidelberg Christmas Market One of the things we are loving this time of year is the Christmas Markets that are going on all over the place. The towns that have the markets each have their own traditions and festivities that are associated with them. One thing they all have is Gluhwein which is kind of like wassail with alcohol. There is also an alcohol-free version called "kinder-gluhwein" or "kinderpunsch." We looked up a recipe and it has grape juice, citrus and spices. SOOOO yummy! Loading up on goodies Other delicious foods are crepes, waffles, trdelnik (which is a czech pastry, where they take dough and wrap it around a really thick dowel, often has cinnamon and sugar on the outside) candied nuts, roasted chestnuts, gingerbread cookies, and of course bratwursts and beer, among lots of other AMAZING food. St. Wendel Christmas Market Our first Christmas market we went to was in a small village called St. Wendel and on the opening day they had a p...

I just wanted to do a post about some of the things we've noticed that are different. Bathrooms Most bathrooms have a variation of this to flush the toilet, which at the beginning of our arrival frequently initiated a conversation between Claire and I that went something like this: Claire: Mom, which one, the big one or the small one? Me: Did you go pee or poo? Claire: Just pee Me: And how much toilet paper did you use?? Claire: Uh??? Apparently having two options to flush the toilet really complicated the process. Public restrooms can be challenging at times, especially with small children. One thing we've noticed on our road trips is that the Rest Stops on the sides of the road are different than ours. In many places they consist of an area where you can pull off, a garbage can, maybe a picnic table or two and some trees or bushes. It is not uncommon to see men pulled over in these spots relieving themselves. In fact, Aaron and I laughed one day when we were dri...