"Resting"

Kate had Christmas Fun

It was fun watching Kate get into Christmas. My Mom brought these over-sized santa bags to hide their daily Christmas presents. She figured it out pretty quickly.

This is a sweet shirt that my Godmother personalized for her.

Fun with Grandpa

They read a lot of books

and made "Little Black Sambo" pancakes.

Blaise and Grandma made Christmas cookies

Blaise got to run the kitchenaid with Grandma

Blaise went on his first Field Trip

Every other Tuesday is "Raus aus dem Haus" day at Kindergarten. Roughly translated, that means "Field Trip Day." On this particular day Blaise's group the "Sun Children" were on their way to visit Emily's house. In addition to trips like going to the fire station or museum, they also take turns visiting each other at home. They usually walk at least one way - both, if times allows. This helps them get a sense of distance. They trekked about an hour to Emily's and then took the bus back later. Because we live on the way to Emily's from the Kindergarten, we got Blaise ready in the morning and they picked him up here.

We picked out a tree

St. Nicholas Came

We baked cookies

We also celebrated Thanksgiving

Can you believe I am this far behind?

We hosted Thanksgiving for our American/Canadian/German friends. This year we made it a pot luck for the first time. We did the turkey (though we ended up with 4 small turkeys this year - not doing that again!) and the stuffing. We have formed a great circle of expat friends (with their German spouses) so it is really fun to celebrate the American holidays together.

Here is our friend, Jenn, with her youngest son.

Catching Up...

wow, do I have a lot of that to do!

I have become so involved in other things - mostly working in my "free time" and I have left my blog to be very alone. Bear with me while I try and catch up so as to not forget all the wonderful milestones we have witnessed in the past few months. Beginning with the HUGE milestone of Blaise going to "school." He started Kindergarten in late November and he seems to like it. They do fun activities with the kids and go on some small field trips. It has really helped his active German and his teacher is super nice!

Here is the obligatory first-day-of-school picture: November 2011: