Christmas in Deutschland

Frohe Weihnachten

("Merry Christmas" in German)

 

We had a very Merry Christmas here in Germany thanks to our wonderful families! Lyla's first Christmas was like none other that I have ever seen. By this I mean... she got to stay home all day, not rush around anywhere, and play with her mountains of new toys! 

 

This year Christmas was very different for us. Definately for me. I am so use to having at least 5-6 places to be between Christmas eve and Christmas Day. We enjoyed our first Christmas with Lyla in the quietness that we have here and looking out on beautiful snow fall. 

 

Beyond that we got to enjoy a really neat German tradition: Christmas Markets! We only got to go to one this year, in Rothenburg, because we were snowed in most days, but it was really great. We ate our first German braut, Yummy Crepes, and I had my first mug of  Gluhwein (warm wine) which was so yummy! We also got a "snowball" which is fried dough covered in all kinds of goodies... mine was covered in Chocolate of course!

 

All in all we want to thank our familes for making Christmas kindof feel like home with the showering of gifts! We love you all very much and miss you!

Here are pictures from our Christmas Adventures:

 

Rothenburg

Beautiful snowy sights along the way...

After a 2 1/2 hr drive, we finally got there!

Walking into town, looking for the Christmas market

Starting to see more decorations!

Finally made it to the market! We had been talking about going for at least 2 weeks!

All Christmas markets are centered around the Church!

The biggest Christmas store I have ever seen! They had so many beautiful hand carved items.

HUGE tree! I would sat at least 30 ft tall!

This was just as big as the tree! All hand carved wood. So beautiful!

The walls surrounding the city as we were leaving. Very cool

Christmas

In her first Christmas Hat!

The beautiful Candle holder I got in Rothenburg

Lyla's first ornament! It says Merry Christmas in German

The hand painted ornament I got in Rothenburg

Glass ornament we bought in Kiaserslautern (AKA" K-Town")

Our Tree with most of the goodies under it

We tried Very hard to get her to sit infront of the tree... this is the best we got!

Our family pic on Christmas Eve

Lyla with all of her goods

Opening on Christmas Eve

And Christmas Morning after the madness!

 

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

To Germany we go....

November 10th, Lyla and I flew to Germany to be with Austin before his next deployment. The flight was amazingly easy considering Lyla fell asleep at take off and woke up when we landed! When we got to Frankfurt, that was another story. Austin had gone to the wrong airport so Lyla and I went all over the Frankfurt airport trying to find him! Two hours later and we were finally together again! We are just getting settled in and our home goods should be delivered this coming Friday, December 3rd!

November has been a good month for us. Lyla turned 8 months old and is learning so so so much. She is standing and cruising on everything and even took a step with out holding on the Saturday after Thanksgiving! She just continues to amaze us all the time. We have already found a play group here and are enjoying going when we can. We are just really enjoying being together as a family before Austin's next deployment, which is coming up faster than we want it to.

Thanksgiving was great this year. We had our first snow in Germany (which wasn't much for them, but more that I usually see in a whole year!) and we had two friends over to celebrate with us. This was my first time cooking the whole dinner by myself, but everything turned out great!

Here are some pictures from November! More to come...

Right before we boarded the plane

Out big plane to Germany!

 Finally back hanging out with daddy!

 She got a new toy when we got here because we didn't have much for her to play with.

Yummy wipes!

The view from our dining room

Headed to the park to swing for a few minutes

 We went to an FRG meeting. It was close by so we walked!

 Playing guitar with daddy!

 Helping daddy make breakfast for dinner...yum

Our first Germany snow day!

October 2010

Happy October (eventhough today is the first of December.... you should be updated!)

Here are some of the professional pictures that I promised, we had them done at about 6 1/2 months:

The photographer (Melanie North) was absolutely amazing! We had a lot of fun, but then we had to get ready to leave for Georgia, then Germany.

In early October, before Austin left for Germany, we took a vacation to LA. We had lots of fun driving around in the hills looking at big houses and cruising around Hollywood!

(Will update with pictures later, they are not on this computer)

My mom and her friend Marla flew out to California to help me drive back to Georgia. We had an interesting adventure and made a few stops along the way. I will also update with pictures later!

Halloween was fun. We went to a Halloween party with Papa and Nana. (Also no pictures on this computer) Then on Halloween we went to Oma and Opa's house to do some "Trick-or-treating" AKA: take pictures since neither babies eat candy!

Lyla just wanted her bucket anyway! :)

We only went to a few houses with her cousin Jude for some photo ops!

San Diego

I forgot to put in a little blurb about our San Diego trip!!! 

We had a great time and really enjoyed the zoo, sea world, and walking around on the board walk! We stayed at the Navy Lodge and it was nice!

Lyla was a trooper and enjoyed all the new sights. We got some good zoo pictures, but mommy forgot the camera when we went to sea world :( oopse!

 Lyla was SO happy to be out of the car!

 Austin being difficult to take pictures as usual!

 WOAH!

 She's trying to escape...

 HAHAHA

 Watching the Hippos!

 :)

These are the ones from Sea world we took on our phones... not much, but something! 

We were waiting on the Dolphin show! and it was chilly out!