Not-so-white Christmas- 2011

We were back in Minnesota for the holidays again this year. Dave stayed for 5 days and I was there for 3 weeks! We had our traditional German (and this year Mexican too) meal on the 22nd (pre-bug thankfully) with Kobe beef guhuctus, German potato salad, herring, and beef stew and tamales to top off the Mexican side of the meal. We celebrated an early Christmas eve with my immediate family (parents and sister's family).

Christmas Eve is Bob's (Dave's dad) birthday so we enjoyed a meal at the Treibers and were able to stick around for the annual visit from their friends who come and sing "Happy Birthday" and then "We wish you a Merry Christmas" to them every year!

Unfortunately Christmas morning was spent in bed (till almost 3PM)... and that was all 4 of us- we couldn't believe the girls just kept on sleeping, but we let them! We were able to go to my cousin Shawn's house in the evening to see my extended family on my mom's side. None of us were feeling to hot, but we thought the worst was over. And it was, for us anyway. Unfortunately we heard a couple days later that several people at Shawn's that evening caught some sort of Bug. Since it was going around, maybe it wasn't us that passed it on-- but more than likely.

It was sad to see Dave go back to Baltimore, but I was able to spend some time with family and friends for the following weeks that I would otherwise not have been able to do with a full-time office job, so I had to take advantage!

Lucy? Stella? (i think Stella, not 100%)

Grandpa's wearing Stella's hat.. and backwards to boot

Stella

Lucy and Mom on the (day after) Christmas morning

Lucy, Luna, & Stella- and only one guitar?

Hallway at my parents condo... all 4 grandkids

Becky, Nico, Luna

Harajuku Mini

Opa with all his granddaughters

The extent of Christmas day at Shawn's.. with sick kids:(

PS. We only had a dusting of snow my entire 3 week visit... bummer!

Oh Christmas Tree...

 Stella and Lucy getting ready to go to the North Pole on Wednesday!

Even though we are headed back to Minnesota for Christmas- I still wanted to put up a tree!
And as much as we would have loved to get a real Christmas tree, we decided that we should stick with our old artificial one to minimize the watering and needle-cleanup etc.

So last week, we empty out our entire closet to get down into the basement (which is what we have to do any time we need to get down there to get/do anything: storage, check the water heater, change the furnace filter, and oh, I don't know, scoop up water?). Anyway... we go down to retrieve the Christmas stuff and we find everything; everything but the top of the 3-piece tree. For the last several years we have used the artificial tree, but we only use the middle and top portion- since the bottom portion is too big for the typical Baltimore row home. We did have leaking down there this year, so we moved things around a bit; we looked and we looked (and the basement is not that big) with no luck. So we tried other spots in the house in which it may have migrated... no luck.

We did not find the top of the tree. However, I did find my mini Christmas tree that I bought in 6th grade at Walgreens. So... utilizing some wishful thinking and tinkering (along with duct tape and some bamboo skewers)- I attached the mini tree to the top of the middle portion... and then we decorated! Needless to say, it does not look great, but it does keep us laughing!