Christmas Puzzling

The days between Christmas and New Year's Eve were filled with plenty of relaxation, long, cold walks, lots of good food, friends and some puzzling. 
We started this puzzle on Christmas day.  It was a gift for Benjamin but we all put in tons of time together putting the pieces into place. 

It was a really cozy time with music and Christmas cookies, hot cocoa and laughter.
During one of our puzzle sessions Marty went out to check the mail and inside were some DELICIOUS homemade salted caramels from my sister in law, Kelley!!  Thank you!!!!  So SO yummy. 


Here is the progression.

the final piece

We started a second puzzle but we sadly, did not get very far.

The Days Blurrrrr

Cold day out at Wannsee... Running errands

I guess it is a good sign of a truly relaxing vacation when you have NO idea what day of the week/year it is.  The only thing that keeps me in check is that I know on Sundays all the stores are closed as well as the holidays and at this time of year there are A LOT of days when the stores are closed. We have been getting out for daily  long walks Mogli.

On Sunday we were invited to go to our friends Beth, Jochen, Maya and Louis' house for the German traditional "Kaffee and Kuchen"  Germans traditionally have cake and coffee in the early afternoon.  This time Jochen made a currant/berry tart that was SO delicious.  Before the cake time the kids and the dads spend a couple hours at the local pinball arcade.  And before that Marty an I ran a couple of errands in the bitter cold but beautiful weather.  We spent several hours just chatting and eating cake and drinking tea and coffee.  It really is a nice tradition.
On Monday we had our good friends the Hoffmans over for a late lunch.  We all ate ourselves sick on the lunch (sweet potato and black been enchiladas) and the yummy dessert that they brought of homemade apple muffins topped with vanilla ice cream, fresh raspberries and whipped cream.  We then played several Song Trivia games with our new Google home hub device.  Fionnuala,

Josie and I held our own against Noah, Wolfgang and the formidable DJ - Marty who typically not only knows the song title but also the artist.   The

younger boys had an absolute blast playing nerf guns downstairs.
We had started the Christmas puzzle a couple of days before but Wolfgang helped a lot and was quite amazing at finding just the right piece to go in just the right place.  Fun, lazy holiday break days and evenings.

Happy Second Christmas/Boxing Day

 In the States there really isn't anything going on the 26th of December.  Here in Germany it is called "Second Christmas" and is as much of a holiday as Christmas Day.  All stores are closed, families and friends gather.  It is a nice time actually.  I know in the UK they call it Boxing Day and once when we were in Canada after Christmas we were shocked to see all the stores closed on the 26th in celebration of Boxing Day.  My Irish friend tells me it is called St Stephen's Day in Ireland.  But no matter what it is called everything is closed and the day is celebrated.  I told my friends in America it is just back to business as usual.

All the other children are Benjamin's age or younger
so Josie has joined the ranks at the adult table. 

This is our second time spending the day with at good friends, the Buchanans.  Juli makes the traditional Christmas ham and potatoes and fancy desserts.  Our other good friends, Anja, Kyle and kids join along with Anja's parents who are typically visiting from the UK.  It is a

Benjamin on the other hand is quite happy to stay
at the kid table right next to the brand new Nintendo
gaming system. 

really nice, low key time to celebrate with friends and good food.  Oh and we play a fun white elephant game of sorts which is a fun way to cap off the day.  Thank you Juli and Luke!!!!

Merry Christmas

 On Christmas morning we slept in late - again.  This sleeping in thing has become a habit.  Well, let's be clear it was 8am, so not really "late" but late for us.  Marty is typically very much a morning person and up by 6am even on the weekends.  But this last trip to Seattle knocked him out as he was working nearly the entire week he was home. He didn't have any jet lag really so sleeping "late" seems a nice trade off.
We got up and shortly after the kids woke up.  I popped a baked oatmeal with blueberries in the oven to bake while they opened their stocking stuffers.  These were the physically smallest gifts but not the smallest financially. I had been looking at buying Josie Hamilton tickets to see in London but we just couldn't make the times work.  The show ran only through mid April when I started looking and our holidays from school and Marty's work were just not aligning, even for a long weekend away.  A few days before Christmas I got an alert that the show extended its run through 3 weekend of May which did it for us.

Memorial Day would work well.  While the Kitcheners were here we bought 8 tickets all seated together so not only did we have a super awesome gift for the kids (Benjamin has been into musicals nearly as much as Josie of late) but we have another adventure with the Kitcheners on the books.
They opened all of their other stocking stuffers and we saved the tickets for the end.  Josie was thrilled.  We weren't sure how she would react because she knows how much I love to travel and she has put a foot down on nearly any future trip (clearly this will have to change!!) But she was SUPER excited.  Benjamin too but he still preferred his Google Home over the tickets.  Oh and his

Before the movies we took Mogli for a long walk
We don't leave him home alone much but before we
do we always make sure he has had a chance to get
his energy out.  

Risk game which we broke in at the end of the day on Christmas.
After we ate and cleaned up, etc we got ready to go to the movies. A movie gift certificate was also wrapped up for the kids.  There is a huge theater here with mostly English movies. Or OV - meaning Original Version.  Most of the Theaters play the American movies dubbed over with German.  Not nearly as much fun for me and Benjamin.  Marty and Josie would be fine, probably.

We headed downtown and were a bit early.  We didn't know how crowded it would be.  I know it is often a thing in America but not as much here.  Funny enough while living in the States I always wondered "Who really goes to the movie on Christmas day""  How lame I thought.  Don't they have family?  Well, living over here has taught me many things and one very big one is that a lot of people don't live near their extended families year round.  And as much as I would rather be with our family at Christmas this has become our Christmas tradition as we did it last year too.  The kids love it as we buy the "family pack" which means 3 large bags of popcorn and 4 large drinks (who really needs that much pop??) for just an extra 10 Euro.  Total for 4 movie tickets, 3 large bags of popcorn and 4 large pops was 38 Euro

(about 42 USD) so I would say movies are cheaper here?  I haven't been to a movie in the states in forever!!  We saw Jumanji - The Next Level and it was pretty good.  We had all just watched the first one together a few weeks ago on a weekend in the house.
When we got home no one was really all that hungry due to the junk food so we just had left overs and played Risk - for HOURS.  I had forgotten how long that game takes!!  But Benjamin was in heaven.  All in all a quiet, nice and cozy Christmas for the 4 of us.

Merry Christmas Eve

Our Christmas guests left very early on the 24th.  Marty was kind enough to send them off properly at 5AM but both Ali and Chris said it wasn't necessary to wake up so early and so we had a proper good bye the night before.  I ended up sleeping in until 8AM which was probably my best Christmas gift.  😄
The tradition here in Germany and with Marty's family is to have the big Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve after dinner.  When we lived in Seattle we were able to appease both sides of the family by having German Christmas at Marty's parents house in the evening of the 24th and then Santa came to our West Seattle house on Christmas morning.  When growing up we were often allowed to pick one gift to open on Christmas eve but the big celebration was always Christmas morning.  Well, we have been so busy that we hadn't even talked about how we would do Christmas this year.  We were alone- just the 4 of us- so we could do whatever we wanted.

Projection Alarm Clocks and the games Risk (Risiko - because it is the German version) and Boggle for the kids from Grandma and Papa. And very generous gift money from the Riemer side of the family.  THANK YOU!!!

We decided to stick with tradition and get the German hot dogs and potato salad for dinner (Benjamin doesn't like potato salad and Josie is a vegetarian) so it meant a bit of throwing other things together to make a meal.

Google Homes for
each of the kids

I had been so busy leading up to Christmas that not one gift was wrapped yet.  I sent the kids, Marty and Mogli on the job of going to the stores to get the food - all stores would close at 2PM on the 24th and not open again until the morning of the 27th.  In that time I was able to wrap the gifts. We didn't put any gifts under the tree this year in fear of Mogli chewing them up.
Because it gets dark so early here and we had forgotten to eat lunch our Christmas Eve dinner came around 3:30PM - right about when it was getting dark 😏
After dinner the kids opened their bigger (physically) gifts that were under the tree.  We decided to do all the stocking stuffer type gifts the next day.  It turned out being a very quiet, cozy, merry Christmas Eve. Mogli got a light up dog collar so we took him on an evening walk and then all went to bed to read books.

Christmas with The Kitcheners

Christmas came a bit early for us in the form of good friends arriving to break in our newly unveiled guest room and rec room.   We had been planning this for months- actually before we had even bought the house and we kept holding our breath as their arrival was slowly approaching hoping that our basement would be finished in time.  Thankfully it was!

We had a great time seeing some of the Christmas sights, visiting a few Christmas markets, sliding down an enormous slide, eating good food and "ice" (it is actually white plastic not ice) skating for the kids.  You know you are good friends when the last day is mostly spent planning your next adventure together.  Thankful for good friends who have become like family.

Josie, Marty, Will and Chris spent a day in the Polish town of Zagan where the film The Great Escape was filmed and is the sight of Stalag Luft III.

Pedicures

 I don't treat myself very often to a pedicure but I probably should more often as my feet get extremely dry and cracked in both the summer and winter extreme temperatures.  I decided that while Marty was in Seattle my feet could use a bit of pampering.  This is only the third time I've had a pedicure in Germany- normally I get one while we are home in Seattle for the summer.  In Seattle I LOVE getting a pedicure. It is so relaxing.  They have massage chairs and they massage your feet and legs and paint your toes and soak your feet.  Heavenly.  I always want it to go on forever and am sad at the end of the 30- maybe 45 minutes if I'm lucky.
Here it really couldn't be any different.  They start with the same type things.  Pick out your color and soak your feet but then, every single time, they have either cut my feet trying to get the cuticles cut back or this time they had the buffer and kept knicking my ankle skin.  Then when she finally put on the paint she kept digging her finger nail into my cuticle to get the extra paint

off.  I can really withstand a great deal of pain but every time it is quite painful, anything but relaxing and as much as I want the pedicure to go on and on in Seattle I can't wait for it to be over here.  And by the end I've endured nearly 2 hours of sitting in a chair being tortured. But my toes look lovely and they are always so proud off all of the skin they have sloughed off my very dry heels. 

Darkness

It really is shocking how far north we are here in Berlin.  I mean,  Seattle is already pretty far north so you would think I would be used to it but on the shortest day of the year Berlin has 46 less minutes of daylight than Seattle.  This time of the year it starts getting dark here around 3:30 and the sun sets at 3:50 ish.
Pretty much the entire month of December it has been very dark still as we leave for school in the morning at 7:30 AM. 

Often there will be blue sky
during our very short days

On December 21st, the shortest day of the year Berlin has a day length of 7 hours and 39 minutes whereas Seattle has a day length of 8 hours and 25 minutes.  Of course on the longest day of the year we get it back and then some but right now the days just seem VERY very dark for most of the day.  It rains less here which helps because the skies are not constantly clouded over but still. It is dark.  SO SO happy that we are nearing in on the shortest day and then the days SLLLLOOOOWWWLLLY start getting longer.

Basement Surprises

 The kids and I decided that we would really surprise Marty when he returned from Seattle by cleaning the basement, taking all of our storage stuff from the rec room and putting it where it belongs, setting up the furniture and just making it into what it was designed to be - livable.  I never thought this day would come and even though it was promised to be done the week

previous, it was finished the day Marty flew to Seattle.  The kids and I spent the ENTIRE weekend (minus the time we baked Christmas cookies) working downstairs.  It was a lot of work but we all felt very accomplished once we were finished.  Both kids had such great attitudes throughout the project.

This was the state of the rec room.  Basically a storage place for all of our stuff. 

Everything was covered in about 6 inches of construction dust.  Fun!!

And when Benjamin woke up Monday morning the first thing he said was "I really like our new basement"
These are all photos of the basement in process:

Guest room/half tiled

For a few days the laundry room was connected to the heater room (where I dump the water from the dryer) by a few planks set on top of tool cases.  It was fine to walk across the planks empty handed but once I had a full laundry basket or water collection drawer it was a bit tricky. 

I took a bunch of photos of the basement still in chaos an unfinished the day Marty left and kept sending him these photos throughout his trip complaining that the basement still wasn't finished.  Boy was he surprised to come home and see this:

After their hard work I promised them a trip to their new favorite burger restaurant in town.  Thankfully they have a couple different veggie burger options for Josie.  It was nearly 3PM on Sunday when we had finished our weekend project and we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast around 8AM.  We were starving and the burgers tasted so good.  

Christmas is Coming

My good friend, Eva, and I went for a
nice festive coffee at a beautifully
decorated green house/ cafe/gift shop

This year we decided to get the kids mostly experiences rather than things for Christmas which cut down significantly on the stress for shopping.  I was able to enjoy the baking and all of the lights that decorate Berlin during this time of year without the panic of "what more do I need to buy."  It seems our Christmases here have become much less big and hectic and much more simple and pure.  I think I prefer it here except for the fact that we miss our family and friends this time of year more than ever!!

Our good friends Beth, Jochen, Louis and Maya came over for a Christmas baking party.  It worked well because we have two ovens and because Beth and I decided that we should all make our dough the night before.  That way the dough can sit in the fridge overnight and we would be ready to go with the baking and decorating from the get go. Otherwise it just takes too long.

All of the ingredients

Making the dough the night before

They do have M&Ms here but not in the Christmas colors. 
So we decided to just pick out the other colors as much as possible. 

The boys were engaged for a big chunk of the afternoon but soon found themselves playing video games waiting for the cut out gingerbread cookies to cool so we could decorate it.
Marty, sadly, was in Seattle for the week and missed out on the fun.

Cookies for days.. months!!!