Merry Christmas!

We have been celebrating by building a gingerbread house (and eating a lot of the decorations...)

Learning why we celebrate Christmas

Eating lots of waffles

And enjoying opening some presents.

Fröliche Weinachten!

Speyer Historiches Museum

On Sunday we took a short train ride (which Benjamin was really excited about) to Speyer, this time to visit the Historiches Museum for their special Playmobil exhibit. It was such a cool exhibit! They had huge scenes set up of Playmobil toys and vintage figures plus a play area for the kids in every room. It was genius! In one of the rooms there was an explanation/demo of how the toys are molded and everyone got a little Playmobil mouse. The kids were really excited about those.

At the entrance of the museum:

Roman soldiers

Roman play area:

I loved the dinosaurs!

This was the ceiling of one of the rooms - a bunch of little Playmobil figures!

The castle:

Fairyland - Noah likes the unicorn.

Noah's Ark - to which Noah asked "Where's me??" :)

Christmas market. Love.

Sea world. This one was huge!

Benjamin, being a Playmobil figure.

Die Eiskönigen

We took the kids about 15 minutes away to Mannheim this evening to see "Frozen," or "Die Eiskönigen" as it is called here. The theater in Mannheim shows the English versions of movies, which was pretty exciting for all of us. Mannheim is especially beautiful, with lots of Christmas lights. The boys unanimously decided that Olaf was the best part of the movie. :) Just before we went to the movie, Noah's school had an Adventscafe, where we heard the kids sing some Christmas songs and everyone got to decorate and eat way too many cookies, called Plätzchen. It was a great Wednesday, though the kids were quite exhausted when we got home at 8:30 and fell right to sleep.

Christmas Banquet

We had our program Christmas banquet on December 3rd, where we ate a traditional German dinner of goose, and our party with Christmas carols and Secret Santa reveals followed. It was a great party before the students' finals began. We have an end-of-semester banquet this week, and they all leave on Tuesday for their winter break. B & N have school until the 20th, so Tim and I get to have a little break too!

Our Christmas Tree

We are getting all of the benefits of having a big, real tree this year, and we didn't have to do any of the work to get it here! The kids loved helping the big kids decorate it...

And they also loved the Santa hat and reindeer antlers.

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmastime

I have decided that Christmas is the best here in Germany! The streets are filled with lights, cute stands full of warm drinks, sweet treats and handmade things to buy. We decorated our apartment and loved looking at the lights!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving with our students tonight - our regular Monday night restaurant prepared an amazing feast for us with seven turkeys, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn, and a few of us made some pumpkin pies!

I am resoundingly thankful for these two kiddos. They are amazing, smart, creative, funny little boys who make me smile when I think about them. They love each other so much, it makes my heart smile.

I am also so thankful for Tim, who works so hard every day. He's amazing and hilarious and so kind. :) There are so many other people I am thankful for, friends and family who are so dear to our hearts! I am also thankful that we have this opportunity to live in Germany for the year. It has been hard, fun, exciting and amazing, and we can't wait to see what the next 5 months have in store!