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!