Stockings! (or Socken, as the Germans say)

We received our stockings just in time for our early Christmas with the girls on Dec. 23 before our trip to Sicily, Italy began the next day. They are such adorable stockings made my the hands of my dear mama. I particularly love the bally trimming on the cuff and the white piping on the heel and toe. The girls loved them. Loralynn opened the package and started shrieking and running around the house in delight.

This is the first year we've done stockings with Loralynn (4) and Tana (2). It was a great year to start because their enthusiasm was contagious! We filled the stockings up for our afternoon Christmas and the girls thoroughly enjoyed opening the little gifts inside that we mostly bought from the euro store. If you want to watch delighted kids, take a look at the 10-minute video below:

Finished gingerbread house & ornaments

This is the second year we've made Christmas tree ornaments in our family. It has been such fun. We finished stringing and labeling the cinnamon applesauce ornaments for Loralynn's Fische group at German Kindergarten. Several of the parents and the substitute teacher asked about how they were made. It is a little difficult to give recipes to Germans because they weigh their ingredients in grams on little kitchen scales when they

do recipes. I ended up just giving Claudia one of our American measuring cups so that she would have the precise amount of applesauce. Luckily, the cinnamon container already had the weight in grams on the label so that worked out fine.

We turned the white hand prints into tiny snowmen.

For the second ornament project, we bought shatterproof blue ornament balls at Quadro. I painted Loralynn's right hand and Tana's left hand (just in case the balls got mixed up) with white paint and placed an ornament in the center of each of their hands. They closed their painted fingers around the ball and then opened them. Once the paint dried on the balls, I used permanent marker to draw the snowmen and label with their name and year. They turned out so cute!

The cinnamon applesauce ornaments were a hit at school.

For the third year, we also got our gingerbread house made. It was more festive this year because construction happened at a gingerbread house party that Mike and Crystal C. threw. They baked the walls, roofs, and chimneys and did an excellent job putting together a table of decorations and frosting bags. We even got some great chili and cider, too! It was Tana's first chance to add decorations this year. We decided that Loralynn and Tana will be ready to candy-up their own houses next year. It really is so fun and it makes for a lovely table decoration (until little fingers pry off too much of the candy). Amazingly enough, Loralynn was so focus

ed on the decorating that she didn't eat any of the candy that she was putting on. Tana didn't either, and it was nearing the end of the decorating before she realized that the frosting "glue" was pretty tasty!

Tropical Islands and cold Christmas markets

Loralynn and her mama look at the festive decor on the giant, walkable Christmas arch at the Dresden Striezelmarkt.

It has taken some time to go through all the pictures from our Thanksgiving trip. I finally have a chunk selected to share here. It was quite an eventful time starting Wednesday afternoon all the way through Sunday evening. All four of us were quite tired and mildly sick which made for a rough start, but halfway through we were feeling better and having fun.

We stopped near Dresden the first night. We stayed in a spacious old school house with two kitchens (one we made into Tana's bedroom), two bedrooms, and two bathrooms. On Thanksgiving morning we went to the Dresden Hygiene Museum. It was full of fun for the girls on the bottom floor with tubes to climb in, dark "caves" to walk through and experience texture, a giant piano to run on, ladders to climb up, and other fun hands-on stuff. The upper floor was a hodgepodge of inventions and advancements to look through. Nothing was in English, but you could figure out stuff just by looking at it or playing with it.

After the museum, we hit Dresden Striezelmarkt (established 1434). It was one of the best we've been to (and we've been to a lot!) We ate our first "langos"-- fried dough with garlic cream sauce, shredded cheese, and ham on top. It was the tastiest thing I've ever eaten at a Christmas market. That, and bratwurst, was our Thanksgiving meal for the holiday. The girls rode the tiny train around and Loralynn rode a fast ferris wheel with me when Tana was sleeping. We saw the 46 foot high Christmas pyramid. We have a miniature version sitting in the center of our dining room table. We light the candles on it for dinner several times a week. Loralynn likes to see the sheep and shepherds run in circles. Tana likes to blow out the candles and tries to do so from her far away seat at the table.

Friday morning we relaxed and packed up for our journey to Tropical Islands near Berlin. After 1.5 hours of driving we stopped at McDonalds for lunch and realized that I left our entire Rubbermaid tub of food at the apartment that we checked out of that morning. We didn't want to add 3 hours of driving to our trip so we decided to find a grocery store and buy skimpy meals for the rest of the trip. So much for making good food for breakfast and dinner in our apartment in Berlin! We survived, but didn't eat that awesomely for the three remaining days of our trip.

Things perked up when we arrived to go swimming at Tropical Islands for the afternoon. We spend three hours there swimming with the girls, looking around the place, and playing in the sand. After we showered and cleaned up, we found our apartment (20 minute drive) for making dinner and bed.

All day Saturday we spent at Tropical Islands swimming with the girls, playing with giant LEGOS, running around a foam ball arena with ball launchers, climbing kids' structures, doing a over-sized connect-four game, steering bumper boats, paddling paddle boats, walking the nature trail, eating lunch and ice cream, building sand castles and more. We wrapped up the day around 4 p.m. with showers and returned to the apartment for dinner, relaxing and sleep.

The family warms up in a giant teepee at Leipzig Christmas Market.

Sunday we dropped by the apartment we stayed at the first two nights and picked up our sorely missed food container. We headed to Leipzig Weihnachtsmarkt (established 1458) to enjoy some more Christmas festivities. Dan bought my Christmas present there which he allowed me to display right away at home for the holiday season: a Herrnhut Sterne (or Moravian star). We came to know of this star that is famous in east Germany from the location of our niece Alicia M. at her discipleship training school. The star originated in the village of Herrnhut as a math project around 1830 at a Moravian boarding school for kids with missionary parents. It was adopted very quickly into homes as an Advent star that represented the Star of Bethlehem that led the wisemen to baby Jesus. It can have 20, 26, 32, 50, 64 and 110 points. Ours has 20 and glows brightly in our living room window.

After walking by many of the market stalls and tasting some of the dessert foods, we decided to finish the last 2.5 hour drive home to conclude our Thanksgiving vacation 2013-- perhaps the last in Germany...? Only God knows where we'll be next year.

Tana enjoys crawling on the over-sized piano at the Dresden Hygiene Museum as her knees and hands make the keys sound.

Tropical Islands near Berlin offers air balloon rides inside the hangar resort.

Bumper boats offered some amusement at Tropical Islands. Onsite hotel rooms can be seen behind.

Loralynn and Tana enjoyed watching the coy fish swim in the little ponds at Tropical Islands.

One of the "dry" activities at Tropical Islands offered mounds of giant LEGOS for limitless building.

An ice cream treat at Tropical Islands gave everyone a smile.

Mistletoe is a poisonous and parasitic plant, but it has been popular to kiss under it since the 16th century.

Here is yet another view of the Tropical Islands resort near Berlin that resides inside an old giant blimp hangar.

An outside view of the blimp hangar where Tropical Islands Resort resides give little evidence of the excitement inside.

More "dry" activities like this climbing apparatus were available inside Tropical Islands.

This area of Tropical Islands was a kid's paradise with activities to last hours.

Loralynn was intense in her driving of the bumper boat at Tropical Islands.

Most of our time in the water with the girls was spent at the Tropical Islands beach area with kiddie pool and slides.

The Hygiene Museum in Dresden had an impressive facade.

We treated the girls to a few rides at the Dresden Striezelmarkt and Leipzig Christmas Market.

We experienced this pool with the girls early Saturday morning before the crowds hit the Tropical Islands Resort.

Waterfalls, whirlpools, a platform with spouting water and two big kid slides were found in this area.

See the beautiful flowers in the vases? The tea balls "blume" into these when brewed. We found these in Leipzig.

We now have an off-white Herrnhutter Sterne (star) hanging in our living room window.

Langos are my new favorite Christmas Market food.

Dresden had a medieval Christmas Market the had a personality of its own... and langos.

It was fun to watch this "baum" treat being made even though it wasn't super yummy.

Most Christmas markets seem to sell Feuerzangenbowle. It is my favorite German Christmas drink-- yes, even more than Gluehwein! It is made with a rum-soaked sugarloaf that is set on fire and then drips into mulled wine. Yummy sweet!

Loralynn and I took a fast ferris wheel ride in Dresden together while Dan stayed with sleeping Tana in the stroller.

The Dresden Strielzelmarkt is a sight to see from up high.

The Dresden medieval Christmas market had a real blacksmith at work.

Cinnamon Applesauce ornaments

I am very pleased with this year's ornaments that I am making with the girls. Last year we used a salt dough recipe and baked it. I didn't like how they came out puffy and cracked all over. This year we used a dough with two ingredients:

3/4 cup applesauce
4.12 oz bottle of cinnamon

I did a double-take at the recipe thinking that somehow something must have been left out, but sure enough,it was just cinnamon and applesauce. Knead and roll with a rolling pin to 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Punch holes for string/ribbon (to hang) with straw. Baking for 2 hours at 200 degrees Fahrenheit is optional (flip halfway). You can just let them sit at room temperature to dry (flipping often) for 48 hours instead. We baked ours because we wanted to paint them sooner. The recipe only makes about a dozen thin ornaments.

They came out smooth in texture and smell wonderful for years (was given one as a gift a couple years ago and it still smells great)!

We tried three different decorating styles: glitter glue, cheap glitter paint, expensive glitter paint. The glitter glue has the most sparkle but not much color. The cheap glitter paint was useless because there was virtually no glitter in it. The expensive glitter paint looked sparkly and had some color. I will probably let the girls continue decorating with all of them, but I like the silver glitter glue the best.

Loralynn loved painting her ornaments last year and she enjoyed it just as much this year. It has been a much quicker process this year which I appreciate, but I think Loralynn was disappointed that we ran out of ornaments to paint so quickly (we only had 12-- the next batch was still in the oven). Tana was more interested in mixing all the colors together in one dish and experimenting with dipping the different brushes. She got only some of the paint/glue onto the actual ornaments.

We plan to give 21 of the ornaments to her 19 classmates and two teachers at her German Kindergarten before the end of next week.

If you look closely, a hat on one of the snowmen has a bite taken out of it. This happened before I got the chance to explain to Tana that they were not cookies.

Final Christmas Tree Lighting on Ledward Barracks

Everything we do this year will be for the "final" time for the Schweinfurt military community. Tonight we attended the last Christmas Tree Lighting in front of the Command Building on Ledward Barracks. A storm was brewing as the bitter cold winds were picking up so the countdown to lighting up the giant tree couldn't have come sooner! It is always a spectacular sight to see such a display of light on a cut evergreen bigger than most have ever seen.

Our girls sipped on hot cocoa which left a chocolate ring around each of their lips. It seemed to fit well with
their santa hats. Santa arrived in a blaring firetruck. I think the girls were more excited about the truck than the man dressed in red. Loralynn is definitely more aware of Santa this year, though, because he took their stockings that were hung in her German Kindergarten classroom last night. Tomorrow at school they take a walk into the forest to find St. Nikolaus. He will be carrying a sack with their stockings that he filled with treats.

I'm having trouble with the Santa idea. I fully support and participate in pretend and the imaginary with my girls but with the full realization (on everyone's part) that it's not real. I often explain to Loralynn that some stories we read are fun and pretend. Other stories, like the ones in the Bible are real and actually happened. I haven't ever confirmed or denied that Santa is real to her. I try not to put emphasis on it because I really want Jesus to be the focus of the season in our home. I've never been partial to Santa decorations, so most of our decorations are lights and four very different Nativity scenes scattered about the house. I don't want to be the spoil-sport parent that tells her kids that Santa isn't real. But maybe that's the point of being a devoted believer in Christ-- to be counter-culture-- especially when it's diverting attention from our Savior. What do you think?

Being four years old now, this year is the first time she's gotten super hyped up about Christmas. She loves the lights, everything sparkly and shiny, decorations, Santa, presents and treats-- what kids doesn't? I really enjoy her excitement. Just before we went to the Christmas tree lighting, we went to the PX and found the one of two Christmas dresses in her size. We normally never buy clothes retail price, but we decided it would be a special treat for Loralynn. Luckily the one dress was sparkly. While we shopped, she walked around the racks hugging the hanging clothes that she thought were delightful and exclaimed, "Oh, Mama, I love them! Can we get this one... and this one... and this one?!" It was really cute watching her.