Christmaspalooza!

A Canadian lady I met in South Africa was heading back home for her first Christmas back in the cold and she said it was going to be her "Christmaspalooza".  I feel like that has been a good description of our family has treated this one..

We attempted to visit as many Christmas markets and events as we could pack into a short season!  After our last markets in Luxembourg, we also went to one at Maredsous.  Our drive to Maredsous took us through a really cool town called Dinant, which we look forward to visiting again-if nothing else just to drive through this again...

You drive right through the gap!  

We found the Abbey at Maredsous...we decided we need one of these firepits...with the logo!

Charlie (our drummer boy) was happy to find a friend..

The market was on the grounds of the Abbey where they brew wonderful Belgian beer.  So we had a taste and Charlie and Katie checked out the ice rink! 

Kelly missed the skating as she was in England with her swim team...quite a trip!  My high school sports trips meant we rode a school bus a few towns over!

We had some rare for Brussels, December snow...Charlie LOVED it and needed more for his snowman, so he begged me to climb up on the neighbor's garage roof...eventually I relented...

We had an epic snowball fight one night, one thing about the hedges you find all over our neighborhood is that when they catch the snow its perfect for lazy people to make snowballs...you don't have to bend down to scoop it up...just reach out and its waiting for you!  We were all delighted to have the snow again after so long without it!

Our next Christmas Market was in Cologne, which was rumored to have incredible markets. The rumors were true!  We only made it to 2 although there were at least 4 we wanted to see...next year we plan to go and stay overnight.

 I loved this amazing display and the famous Cologne Cathedral towering behind it.  Before we took this picture we walked all through the market surrounding the Cathedral.

Our next stop was the "House Elves" Market because it has an ice rink...and what an ice rink! It was huge and had bridges over it and different sections.

View from the bridge as all the lights came on, the statue looked so neat all lit up!

 Charlie and Katie coming off the ice...Kelly took it easy and didn't skate due to her foot..all she needed was a person to skate into her!  The guy in the uniform was one of the skating rink security guys!

Christmas tree making in Charlie's class. He is having a great year, wonderful teacher and new friends!

 This painting appeared on our neighborhood pub...Santa & his Belgian beer!

 We took that as inspiration to join some friends on a Santa Pub Crawl...was super fun to walk down the streets and call out to people and watch their reactions...we had cars honking horns, people asking to take pictures with us!  Here is our group in front of the famous Brussels statue of the little boy peeing, called Mannekin Pis...Everyone loved the tall guy to Greg's right because he had his own legit white beard!

 Here we are on the famous Grand Place, watching the light show set to Cia's Christmas Album...very cool.

We hosted a holiday open house for our friends and neighbors. The kids all got into helping, especially Charlie...here he is decorating his first train cake.  (I have not made the train cake for the past few years as they had no cooking spray in Africa and it was a disaster without it)

 He wanted to be sure he got the best part of his masterpiece...

 Kelly got inspired and made a pizza Christmas tree which was admired by everyone! 

Charlie begged for a Santa Suit of his own...and I picked one up for his friend too...they were adorable!

 We went to the Children's Mass at our nice English speaking parish here and the little kids did a great Nativity play, the highlight was two real donkeys in the nativity scene outside...they were very popular with all of the kids! Charlie told the girls he is asking for a donkey for Christmas next year!

Not the best picture of the donkeys..but it was a madhouse by them-all the kids were petting them!

Thanks for reading about our Christmaspalooza...I hope that all of you have also had a wonderful Christmas season and that Santa is very good to you...if any of you happen to get a donkey first please let me know so I can send Charlie by for a visit!

Christmas Season Begins!

With much anticipation we got out our decorations right after Thanksgiving, and trimmed Katie's tree. We have not figured out how to chop down our own tree here (although there are tree lots everywhere). Greg even saw a guy on a bicycle driving home with his Christmas tree-how is that for dedication? We are all happy to be in a Christmas country and the weather makes it feel like Christmas to us..its cold just like it should be!

As we shook out the tree skirt the girls were happy we would not find a scorpion lurking under it this year!

 We headed to downtown Brussels to check out the Christmas market...it doesn't compare to the ones in Germany...however there were a few noteworthy things-first this carousel-look at the options!

 Hot air balloon?

 Climb the steps and fly in my own biplane?

 Or ride in the Titanic?  We don't get cool carousels like this back in the US!

 The beer stall for one of the Belgian companies- Leffe...it was its own pub when you got inside.

 Charlie and Greg got to head back to the US for a few days...while Greg worked in NYC, Charlie got to spend time with his best friend from South Africa who now lives in New Jersey..here is trouble!

 The girls and I decided to head to the nearest German Christmas market we could find...we drove a little over an hour away to Aachen-totally worth the trip!

A view from the steps of town hall, looking at one part of the many block long market.

 This giant ball was kind of like a doughnut, covered in warm vanilla sauce...the girls LOVED it!
 (I don't remember what it was called but tons of people were ordering them)

 The shops go all out to decorate, this was the place that sold the famous Printen cookies of Aachen that all the guidebooks said we had to try.  We did our part and got a sampler pack so we could try the ones covered in each type of chocolate-delicious. 

Here is a description from a website called the taste of Germany...
Aachener Printen were developed in the early 1800s in the city of Aachen (Aix le Chapelle) as an advancement to the lebkuchen baking arts. They contain a special combination of the finest flour, sugar molasses, honey, and cinnamon, anise, cloves, cardamon, coriander, and turmeric, and candied oranges and lemons

This stall was selling Swazi candles!

 This area had creepy decorations of witches on top of their entire beer garden area..not sure why there were witches at Christmas?

 Another bakery had these adorable guys...not sure anyone besides Charlie could eat a cookie that big!

One perk of being in Brussels is when important people come to speak at NATO...they might let you come for a quick meet & greet..here is the Ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, introducing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Rex and I, he was very gracious and went around and shook everyone's hands and took pictures if we wanted them. 

While we waited for Rex on Dec 5th,  I was talking with a Belgian guy who was telling me about the Belgian customs for St. Nicholas Day-which happened to be the next day.  He was explaining that it is a very big deal here, for some families it is bigger than actual Christmas.  Most importantly he told me that you must leave out a glass of Belgian beer for St. Nick and carrots for his horse.  I shared this with Charlie who took that for action the same evening. 

 St. Nick even came to ice hockey practice with a special surprise for Charlie's team!

Here is a closer picture of St. Nick.

After dinner that night Charlie ran around getting everything ready for the big man, he put out his shoe as he learned about in French class at school-not his stocking!

All ready! Look at that beautiful beer-he used the Waterloo Uncle Mark!

A Visit to Ypres Expecting a Sleepy Little Place-Big Surprise!

One Sunday Greg was itching to go see a battlefield, only Kelly wanted to come so we headed out and left the other two home for a movie marathon.  Our destination was the city of Ypres to see the In Flanders Field WWI Museum.  I have been teaching middle school history a few days a week and was happy for the refresher just as we were starting our WWI study.

Waterloo sits in an empty field so I was expecting to drive through fields and come to a dusty museum... instead, we drove into a built up, super cool, old walled city.  We parked in the middle of a massive town square and headed for the In Flanders Field Museum.  The museum is in the old cloth hall which was destroyed during the war, we saw pictures inside as to how it looked before they rebuilt it.

 There is a gorgeous bell tower, you take a break from the museum, climb the stairs and have the most incredible view of the city and the entire area.

The museum was very well done, so much to see and they even had these holographic type soldiers that would tell their story in French, English and German, very helpful!  Kelly and I did a speed trip because we were excited to head out into the little shops all around the outside of the museum.  Greg took his time..perhaps the history teacher should have been a little more thorough...as I have a test paper to share with you at the end...

The city was beautiful by day, but as the sun set and the street lights turned on, it was breathtaking.  These were all captured by Kelly.

The Menin Gate is the entrance to the city and every night they do a ceremony there to remember the fallen soldiers.  We did not get a chance to see it this trip but we plan to go back.

My class just took their WWI test...here is the best answer regarding the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war...#18.. guess I have some re-teaching to do?

We look forward to a return visit to such a beautiful old city!  I also plan on a future trip to see Versailles and I'll be sure to post some photos so all of you can be sure it wasn't destroyed!

Fall Break Part 2- Double Birthdays

We headed for Delft since we loved it so much our first time there, it was Katie's birthday so before we left we gobbled up her cake...

Charlie & Louna trying out the shoe!

 The old skates didn't look too comfortable!

One of many cheese shops- windows full of cheese!

 We found a Greek restaurant on the beach that started our dinner with Uzzo shots for everyone! Mark had to do his part to finish off some for the kids...Charlie told the waitress it was Katie's birthday and we all got a treat for dessert!

We walked the beach in Schiveningen...before we headed for Amsterdam.

This car was driving in the bike lane!!  I also drove on the mini van on the trolley tracks...we all lived to tell the tale!  They probably still are talking about crazy Americans!

 Central Station, Amsterdam-what a building huh?

 This one is for you Tanya...

 Charlie's dream car! (or Macie Story..not sure who deserves it more)?

Yes, we had to stop!!

We also walked through the Red Light district, much had changed since we had walked through about 15 years ago...mainly now the ladies are all on their cell phones...while they are waiting for customers!  The best part was Charlie was oblivious-really!  Someday we will tell him what he missed, he was on his scooter and so busy whining about how far we had walked he paid no attention!

As the sun was setting we hopped on a canal boat tour.  Seeing the houseboats all along the canals was really neat to see, I didn't realize how many people actually live on them.  Some are in rough shape and others are really luxurious!  

 One cool shot from Kelly's camera.

 Our last night together we fired up the Raclette cooker...we also celebrated Greg's birthday with a pie Katie baked for him.

Happy about his pie!

 The kids really loved having their cousin!

 The best smile on Charlie!

We loved having our visitors and we hope many more of you come to visit & explore with us!