Getting ready for Christmas

Well we haven't had too much going on lately. I'm just getting ready for Christmas. Our team is having our Christmas dinner on monday night and then we're doing a small seafood thing on Christmas day. I'm making a ton of food for us this year, i'm hoping this year will go better than last year.

Last year i didn't pay attention to when the stores were going to be closed. We hadn't been here long and i just figured they'd be closed for Christmas and that was it. Well turns out they close very early on Christmas eve, then Christmas and the next 2 days. And when things close here, everything closes. I think gas stations are the only thing that can be open during holidays and every Sunday. So last year i didn't make it to the store on time so we ended up going to the arabic district and found one last piece of salmon at a fish market and some potatoes. So we had salmon Christmas day and potatoe soup the next 2 days. It was pretty sad. So this year i'm going all out with sweet rolls, cookies, green bean casserole, creamed corn, ham and plenty of other stuff.

Here's a couple pictures from the past 3 weeks...

Emma and her new rubber boots for all the rainy days, she loves these things. Her new favorite word is "gut gemacht" (well done) but she also gets this mixed up with "gute nacht" so she goes around saying "gute macht" it's pretty funny!

Maggies early Christmas present-a walker. This has been a great buy, she's happy almost all day in this thing

We did gingerbread cookies last sunday. Emma ate sooo much dough!

Maggie helping from her chair
My 3 favorite people

Yes that is a cat on her head :)

Emma and I scrap booking

The matching pig pajamas from their cousin Kelsey

Maggie's Doctor visit

Maggie went in for her 4 month check up yesterday. She weighed in at about 17 lbs (7.65 Kg) and she's 25.7 inches long. So she's really big and healthy. The doctor came in and said "oh, mother's milk? more like mother's creme. How old is this baby, 6 months?" She thought she was a big 6 month old but apparently she's a huge 4 month old. It was pretty funny seeing the doctors reaction. My dad said when she was born...second parity is always the biggest...he's a farmer -haha. So anyway, David and i laughed. She's pretty cute though. She doesn't look fat, she just looks likes she's growing really fast.

Decorating for Christmas

We put up our tree last weekend too. It was so much fun this year because Emma could help and be involved more. She loved the ornaments of course. This one she made last year with Antje, her old babysitter.

Maggie had a blast from the couch...

We finished the night with hot chocolate. Emma started off very neatly with a straw...
...I guess she decided her hand was much easier :)

Walk around Dusseldorf

In between Thanksgivings on Friday we did some errands around the city and walked a really long way. It was freezing! Even with the kids bundled up we still put their rain cover over the stroller to keep the wind out.


First we went to the Library and Emma checked out a horse book and horse movie. Lately she's been obsessed with horses. Her favorite words are "baby horse".

Thanksgiving

If you read David's blog i'm sure you already know all about this, but our Thanksgiving went great! The turkey was perfect and we had just enough. We had a total of 13 people come including our neighbors. I think they had a fun time (everything switched to German by the end, so i only caught about 1/2) but David said everything went smoothly and our neighbors stayed longer than the rest of our team.

We had so much food!

On Saturday we had another Thanksgiving. This was really great but i think i need a break from cooking until Christmas. A couple with the board invited us down to Bonn to celebrate with them. They just moved into a Castle/Chateau that has been turned into apartments. It was beautiful! It's just outside the city and there are horse farms surrounding the grounds. It looks exactly how i always imagined Europe to look.

Since there wasn't any traffic around, Emma could walk around on her own , she thought this was great!