'Tis The Season

I wanted to give an update on the Christmas holiday happenings around here. One bonus to being in Germany, not one person has said "happy holidays" to me yet, at least I don't think they have. Around here the Christmas markets are the big thing. They are said to be in every small town and every corner in Munich. I will have to report back on that since I have not been to one yet. Cindy has, she met her Aunt Shirley in Munich last week. Shirley's family was here with a group touring this part of Europe and checking out the Christmas markets. Cindy took the train from a park and ride close to the house and I think had a pretty successful experience.

Before we talk about Christmas I guess I need to finish up business with Thanksgiving. The Thursday of Thanksgiving was a regular school and work day here. Cindy actually had a training thing she had to do with her team that day. We ended up doing our Thanksgiving a couple of days later on Saturday. We invited a few people over to our house that are on Cindy's team. Two guys that are Americans, one of which brought his German girlfriend over to celebrate with us. That morning we spent hours in the kitchen trying to follow German directions on a multi-step very complicated dessert mixes. I made a chocolate mouse pie and a cheesecake. When I bought them I thought they were box desserts that would have all of the ingredients, besides eggs, milk, water, etc. Wrong! I had to make two more trips to the store to find all of the other stuff needed. Cindy made her super yummy banana split pie thing. We had some roasted chicken, sweet potato casserole, corn, biscuits, mashed potatoes, salad, etc. Washed it all down with some assorted German beer. After dinner we sat down and watched the NFL games from Thanksgiving day. Everyone was supposed to stay spoiler free to enjoy the games, nobody did except for Cindy. I figured I would be hosting and would not get to pay close attention to the game so I needed to go ahead and watch in advance. Reasonable, right? Anyway, it was a nice afternoon and evening with some good people, and we got to have our Thanksgiving dinner.

The first sign of Christmas for us was having our Elf on the Shelf "Fergie" show up. He usually makes an appearance on December 1st. We sat down to eat breakfast on that Sunday morning when David pointed out it was December 1st, where is Fergie? Oops.....Thankfully Fergie made his grand entrance later that morning.

For those not familiar with Elf on the Shelf, Google it. Our Elf sometimes does weird stuff like stack up the chairs. In this first appearance of the season he was found admiring Katherine's school project. She was very excited that Fergie was looking at her project. This is a show box that is decorated to reflect Katherine's favorite celebration. At school the current "unit of inquiry" is to study different celebrations around the world and in different cultures. We tried to convince her to do a more American only holiday/celebration like Independence Day or Thanksgiving, but she wanted to stick with Christmas.

The box is wrapped like a present with wrapping paper on the outside. Inside there are various colors of construction paper glued to the box along with pictures of Katherine from every Christmas that she has been a part of so far. We found some other decorations at the store along with a manger scene. Katherine walked around the neighborhood to find an evergreen that we could cut a part of a branch off to represent a Christmas tree.

We thought it turned out pretty well. She was excited about it for sure. At school, during class, Katherine presented her box and talked about Christmas and everything that is means to her. From what she told me I think she talked for a long time.

A little bit different tradition in Germany is to have both St. Nick and Santa Clause visit children. It seems that St. Nick comes on the evening of December 5th to fill the children's shoes with "shoe stuffers" instead of stocking stuffers. We had been busy planning our weekend ski trip and getting ready to go so St. Nick did not make it until the late morning or early afternoon of the 6th. When the kids got home from school we tried to make the smoothest and quickest transition from St. Nick excitement to "get in the freakin' car we are trying to go skiing" excitement.

It just so happened that St. Nick brought some warm socks, new coat, new gloves, along with some chocolate and favorite other snacks that came in handy for the ski trip and car ride.

A large percentage of the German people do not set up the Christmas tree until Christmas eve. Then they leave it up for a few weeks into the new year. We are not going along with that here. Our Elf started a tradition a couple of years ago when he brought and set up a brand new Christmas tree in our home in Allen. I think I am giving proper credit when I saw that on December 6th St. Nick brought all of the goodies and Fergie brought our mini tree to use for the next couple of years in Germany. It has no ornaments yet, but we expect to collect a few at the various Christmas markets around and take them back home with us. 

Today Katherine had a field trip to the Christmas Market in Landshut with her class. Landshut is a little town about 40 minutes northeast of school. She dressed warm this morning and the class left soon after school started. Katherine told me that she rode a merry go round on a black horse. They got to see St. Nicholas who gave her a little chocolate candy. She heard him speaking German. They brought a few euros with them to buy some of the food. Katherine decided to get some sugar babies. Some of her friends bought a Nutella pancake. At the end her teacher Mr. Nicol took a picture of the class. I am sure he will post it to the school web site and I will re-post at a later date. That is all that I could get her to tell me about it. 

Maybe this weekend we will try to check out a few of the markets to see what we can find. This is our last weekend before we head out to Chamonix France for a ski week over the Christmas holiday. It is getting close!!