Way overdue: Christmas, Silvester, General Frivolity

      I've been putting off updating this blog for a while now, basically since the thought of updating all my adoring fans on (gulp) nearly three weeks of my life seems a little daunting, but it's time for me to finally man the fill-in-the-blank up and get going. Farewell, procrastination. Which, by the way, doesn't go away once you're out of college. It just loses the cool name and you're lazy instead.

      So hey all! I meant to post at least a little hello before the Christmas madness hit, but let's face it, I was doing more exciting things (sorry). So before I get too distracted, Frohe Weihnachten! Guten Rutsch! Und ein schönes neues Jahr! 


      So, not that 2012 isn't cool and all (and let's face it, having spent 9 hours longer there than most of you, oh do I know it), but let's sliiiiiiide back into 2011 for the sake of some recapping. To be totally honest, I've no idea where I left off with my last blog (and no, I don't feel like going back and rereading it. Boring!), so my arbitrary starting point for this will-be-way-too-long entry is 2 1/7 weeks in the past to when Nate arrived for Christmas!


Pre-Christmas

      This all feels so far in the past I won't bore you with too much detail. (I mean, I could remember it all if I tried. Tried hard. Is it really worth it?)  Sparing too much gory detail, Nate flew in midday on Monday of the week before Christmas, and we tried our best to take full advantage of our before-Christmas time to do fun stuff! My family took off for their holiday in Ireland, so we had the house to ourselves for nearly the whole week. My family is so cool. The most impressive part is that they agreed to--nay, offered us--this situation before they'd even met either of us! Good thing we're so cool and trustworthy.

Happy, Christmas-y room! Ignore my creepy boyfriend.

     Our pre-Christmas plans basically revolved around a lot of eating, sightseeing, walking, and other typically touristy things. I'll spare you the disgustingly presh details of our anniversary by just saying 'twas lovely! And precious and nauseating and all those things no one else would really appreciate hearing about. But we did have a lovely dinner and got to spend the day tromping around in the snow, as the German weather gnomes kindly obliged by giving us a lovely, white, nearly-Winter Solstice.

    Speaking of snow, there's been some! Not on Christmas, sadly, but there were a couple of good days of it the week before, and a veritable snowstorm (remember, California girl) on New Year's Eve! None of it lasted too long, but there was enough to make Nate shovel the sidewalk. Hehehe.

Not very inviting-looking playground

Walking by woods on a snowy...morning?

     

      

      Before we jumped headfirst into Christmas celebrations, there was some Hanukkah celebrating to be had!  Lacking a real menorah, Nate handily crafted one out of tin foil, and we lit candles for at least four of the appropriate nights, complete with Hanukkah stories and history lessons (for me, obviously). We enhanced said holiday obversation with some homemade latkes as per Nate's mother's recipe! Sadly our eyes greatly exceeded the capacity of our stomachs, but being starving college students at heart, we managed to finish all of them. Cholesterol food baby = ow. 

SO MUCH OIL

These weren't actually burnt. My camera wanted to fool you.

Happy last night of Hanukkah!

     Other fun activities included Indian food consumption, a lot of church visiting, an evening at the opera seeing La Boheme, and even ice skating at Karlsplatz! I think we each fell once. Not bad for being a combined 20 years out of practice or something like that. And last but not least, lots and lots (and lots) of glühwein consumption. We wised up after a couple of nights and bought the premade bottles at the grocery store (with amaretto shots already included) and heated them up with our own additions of cloves, cinnamon sticks, raisins, and clementines. NOM.

Standing over the ice rink! Note my amazing 1 euro earmuffs!!

Blurry shot of the pit at the Bayerische Staatsoper.

 

Christmas 

      Wow. Here I thought I was doing well and I'm not even up to Christmas yet. Oy. Breathe, Laura. Breathe.  Here, look at this happy picture of the Christmas box my mother sent me!

Homemade chex "TV" mix, Funfetti and Ghiradelli mixes, ginger chews, Burt's Bees. There were socks and scarf too at one point. I absconded with them pre-photo.

      Our Christmas plans have been, since about last April, to head up North to Leipzig for Christmas to spend the big celebration with our good friend, Johann Sebastian Bach. Nate and I spent most of the evening of the 23rd packing up as much food (that being a lot of turkey sandwiches, apples, bananas, trail mix, oatmeal, and cold pasta. My mom should be proud) as we could get our hands on in anticipation of our 8 o'clock ride up to Leipzig with a fellow I'd contacted via the internet (not as sketchy as it sounds, I promise). Until, that is, I received a response email from our ride at about 10 PM, saying he'd been calling me all day and due to car trouble, wouldn't be making the trip on the morrow.  A frantic internet search discovered a train ticket that, thank goodness, is a magical multi-person anywhere-in-Germany-for-40-euros, so we swiftly purchased a train ticket and headed off to finish preparing for our trip. 

     The next morning we headed off to the main train station to catch our first train at about 10:45. Our total trip took three trains and about 6.5 hours, but we survived (barely)! We arrived safely in Leipzig and made it to our hostel by around 5 PM. 

Rough estimate of train route to Leipzig

      I hadn't really thought about the fact that this would be my first trip to the former DDR (East Germany). While it wasn't a phenomenal difference, it was definitely interesting. The wall fell in 1989, which seems to me like a long time ago (based probably only on the fact I don't remember it), but that was a mere 22 years ago. Really not that long. The building style is different, the attitude is slightly different. The apartment/suite we stayed in was a lot more reminiscent of Nate's apartment in Sofia than anything I'd seen in Munich. Granted, Munich is really in a class of its own as far as quality of German cities (#4 in worldwide quality of living survey!), but I think there were differences aside from that, too. 

      Back to the real world. Our hostel ended up being an apartment more than anything else: couches, kitchen, bathroom, stove. Very impressive, if a little sketchy. We had plans to head immediately to the first service at the Thomaskirche (Bach's former church!), but I foiled plans by erupting into tears at the prospect of not being home on Christmas/Eve, so we pushed our plans back by a few hours so my endlessly patient boyfriend could attempt to make me feel better. Without going into too much detail, though I'd figured it would be sad to not be home for Christmas, I in no way anticipated how sad it would be. I was something of a wreck. Fortunately I have a wonderful boyfriend who baked brownies and apples and even watched Love Actually with me and let me play him Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand Christmas songs.

      We finally headed out to catch the first service at 10 PM. Add a midnight chant service, a Christmas morning service, a Christmas evening service, and a second Christmas service to that mix, and we had a pretty ridiculously churchy weekend. Best services were the two morning ones, which each featured a cantata from Bach's Weihnachtsoratorio, with the world famous Thomanerchor boys' choir and the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra. I had to convince Nate not to lie on Bach's grave (on the altar) and kiss it. Just kidding. 

The Big Guy

Bach's stained glass self, between the windows of Jesus and Martin Luther. Heros of the Lutheran Church FTW.

Is that really appropriate? 

  

      The rest of our time in Leipzig was largely uneventful. We survived a 52 hour trip with only one restaurant meal (Christmas dinner, at my insistence. Which was Indian food, in case you were curious.), subsiding the rest of the time on coffee, oatmeal, and cold pasta. Leipzig as a city isn't that nice, but the main old city center is quite pretty, with lots of cool churches and squares and historical buildings. We stopped in for a time at the Zeitgeschichte Forum, a free museum dedicated to the history of the city (and Germany as a whole) after WWII. I was utterly fascinated by stories of the Berlin Wall and East Germany when I was a kid (weird, I know), so I dragged us in and we spent a warm couple of hours in there. At around 3 we headed to the train station and met our ride home, and four hours later or so, we were safely back in Munich.

Mendelssohn! And his women?

Goethe!

Supercool statue in front of the museum representing Germany in the 20th century. The left leg/right arm represent the years under Hitler (army boot on the foot, arm outstretched in a Heil Hitler) while the gaunt, barefoot right leg and red-banded left arm represent the years under Communism.

Don't ask. I have no idea. 

Mendelssohn's house! And Nate, pretending to be cool.

Augustusplatz, with the Paulinerkirche on the left and the Gewandhaus and Operahaus on either side of the plaza.

Gewandhaus window.

Cool Leipzig monument by night

Post-Christmas and New Year's!

      Thankfully we made it back to Munich in time to set out the big Santa presents for the kids to come back to (in background of first picture, waaaaaay above). Kilian got a pirate treasure island Playmobil set and Cliona got a Playmobil dollhouse. Most exciting. My family very sweetly got Nate and I tickets to a concert of the München Camerata, a string orchestra that played lots of beautiful Vivaldi and lots of other more obscure Baroque music, so we missed their return home, but saw them the next day. They took off again to spend New Year's in Alsace, so we once again had the place to ourselves! Though there was indeed a wonderful amount of relaxing (and watching How I Met Your Mother, if the truth be told), we pulled it together and headed over to Salzburg for the day on December 30th. 

      Though it was pretty darn cold and snowy most of the day, we managed to see a lot of cool sites, including accidentally sneaking into a museum exhibit in the Residenz palace (and thus saving 6 euros apiece. It seriously was an accident. We just went in the wrong way when trying to get out of the cold). A hike up to the fortress and along the hills proved incredibly beautiful, with amazing views of the snowy Alps surrounding us. We headed down later, numb-footedly, and briefly visited the Schloss Mirabell and gardens, then headed back to have a bite of food before catching our 9PM train back to Munich.

      New Year's Eve day dawned snowy and cold. It snowed wildly almost the entire morning, but then sadly dwindled to rain by about 5 PM. In our attempt to save money, we made a huge dinner and drank a lot of wine, then headed out to find some festivities at about 9 PM. Wandering around through various public displays found us in the Marienplatz come midnight, where masses of drunken people (most of whom seemed to be Italian, oddly enough) stood shooting off fireworks in all directions and tossing bottles every which way. In the pouring rain. It was a little cold but quite amusing, and we even lucked into a drink of champagne from some jolly fellows standing near us. We continued ringing in the New Year by conversing in a lot of random languages with people in the subway station, and eventually meeting up with a couple of people from a town about 3 hours away, who convinced us to accompany them to a club they'd heard about. While our walk there told about 45 minutes longer than it should have, it was good fun, and I got to practice my German most of the way there as well! Club adventure proved fairly short-lived, and by about 4:15 AM or so we found ourselves back on the U-Bahn, heading for home.

      I won't go into detail about what happened after that, but if you're my Facebook friend, you already know.

Only surviving picture of us on New Year's Eve. Who's the guy? No idea. A girl offered to take a photo of the two of us, and Nate, friendly fellow that he is, insisted the girl's boyfriend be in the picture too. 

      Anyway, Happy New Year, officially! I'll interject to mention that the German way of wishing someone a happy new year is to wish them a Guten Rutsch: literally, a good slide, that being from this year to the next! Cool? Methinks! We celebrated by sleeping in until like 2, heading weakly out to photograph some churches and cool buildings Nate had wanted to see for a while (apply to him for the pictures. Ahem. Ahem.), then spending a relaxing evening in watching too much TV and eating homemade lentils and rice. 

      The next day was, sadly, time to return Nate to the airport, so I headed dejectedly home alone, but rather more happily, my family had returned while we were at the airport, so I was greeted with soup and chocolate. Much better. 

      And here I am! Anne and Michael have the week off, so I have fairly little to do other than merely collect the kids from kindergarten, and unfortunately pretty much everyone I know is still home for Christmas, so this will be probably a rather quiet week. Which I could use, frankly. I will attempt to be better at updating my blog in the new year! 

     Best wishes to all of you for a happy and successful 2012!

And here, the closest thing I have to a picture of kids. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Weihnachten

     Well, dear readers, it's been a lovely, cold, cheery, Christmas-y week. Let me preface this entry by saying I am full to the brim with tea, cake, Lebkuchen, and Glühwein, so anything I say can and will be used against me in...what?

     Anyway, I apologize for skipping blithely over the last nine days of Christmas. If I know you, my dear readers, most of you have spent that intervening time crying over your computers, sobbing into your coffee,  and bemoaning your place in the universe that has someone caused you not to have been gifted with an update into the fascination of my life.

      Not to worry. I'm saving you. (I warned you about the Glühwein effects, did I not? Don't whine.)

      Skipping over the end of last week, which I frankly have very little recollection of, this past weekend brought a true Christmas treat (for this California girl, anyway): our first real snow! Though it "stuck" for only a couple days (and if I must be honest, only on the streets for about...two hours, but please, grant me this one?), it was way too exciting, and the promise of like a full week of snow starting this weekend has me more thrilled than I care to admit. Except I am admitting it. Thank me for my honestly later. See the sacrifices I'm making for the sake of this blog's verity?

      Okay, people from snowier climes than mine, hush your laughter. I can hear you all the way over the  Atlantic. I'll admit, it's not super impressive looking, but it's more the promise of snow to come that I'm excited about. And there's something magical about the first snowfall of the year. (I say this with the wisdom of someone who grew up having, on average, 0.33 snowfalls annually. Thus, I know.)

      About two hours into said snowfall, kids, parents and I bundled into the car to head into town. Anne and Michael were heading to a friend's party that evening, and it was far enough away they decided to get a hotel room for the night rather than drive back late, so the kids and I were scheduled for a whole night (plus following morning) together. I, of course, had to complicate this by having a choir concert that afternoon, so some juggling ensued, ending with the solution that the kids hang at Michael's sister's house until my concert was over, where I would collect them and take them home on the U-Bahn/bus. Fortunately Michael's sister and her husband live in an apartment only about an eight-minute walk from where my concert was, so all seemed to be working out well!

      I headed over to the church where my concert was (Damenstiftskirche St. Anna, in case you were wondering), thankfully in the grateful company of my umbrella, and arrived in perfect time. The church we sang in was lovely--quite small, with probably seating room for only about fifty, but beautifully decorated and resonant. One slightly odd feature was a life-sized sculpture of the last supper: ever sang a concert with 13 men staring at you from behind? Slightly unusual. The concert hall was also freezing--almost literally. I've never before sang a concert where I could actually see my breath whilst singing. My hands almost fell off. The concert went quite well, and definitely better than I'd expected, at any rate! There was quite a good audience turn-out, as well. For those interested, here was the program (with links, if you care to hear them. Not of us singing, though.):

     Rorate coeli desuper mit ne irascaris und consolamini (Listen here)

     Palestrina: Missa Gabriel Archangelus, Kyrie (sorry, not on youtube)

     Gregorianischer Choral: Gaudete in Domino, Dominus prope est (Listen! And yes, we sang off that manuscript)

     Palestrina: Missa Gabriel Archangelus, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei I & II

     Jakob Arcadelt: Ave Maria (More listen!)

     Palestrina: Alma redemptoris mater (Listen)

     Palestrina: Sicut lilium (listen here!)

     Max Reger: Und unser lieben Frauen Traum (Weihnachtslied) (listen!)

     Heinrich Isaac: Puer natus est nobis (starts at 2:50)

     Michael Praetorius: In dulci jubilo (AKA Good Christian Men, Rejoice)

     Praetorius: Es ist ein Ros entsprungen ( AKA Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming)

     Sei uns willkommen, Herre Christ (here!)

     Zoltan Kodaly: Adventi enek (AKA O Come, O Come Emmanuel)

     Everything was very well received, and really a lot of fun! Unfortunately I was about to drop dead from the cold afterward, and the puddle I'd stepped in in my no-longer-waterproof boots didn't help. Struggling back to Michael's sister's apartment afterwards (in the rain, I might add) was quite a challenge. But I made it! Ulrike and her husband had made pizza for the kids and had me stay, of course, which was a nice chance to let my soaking wet socks dry on top of the radiator. The pizza was good too (though I had to surreptitiously pick the pepperoni off).  When the kids started getting in fights with their cousin Julian over who was hitting whose blocks (Julian is 18 months old, so you can get the picture), I knew it was time to go. Mentally preparing myself for the fifteen-minute trek to the U-bahn, and then the half an hour it would take to get home, I was more than thrilled when Ulrike told me her husband would drive us home. Given the snow that was now falling quite heavily, I was glad the opportunity came up.

      Staying the night alone with the kids was more nerve-wracking than I would have anticipated. I was supposed to set up the baby monitor so I could hear them in the night/morning, but I couldn't find it, so I figured I'd just leave my door open and it'd be fine. But the thought of them waking up and me not being up, or freaking out in the middle of the night really got to me, and I tossed and turned most of the night, dreaming about child abductions and such things. I finally went up to lie on the couch at about six, and then Kilian snuck down at about 6:30, and thus the day was started. Anne and Michael had assured the kids they'd be home "in the morning," but Kilian's five-year-old brain translates "morning" as "when we eat breakfast." Thus, he was a nervous wreck by the time his parents came home at about 10:30. I gratefully escaped back down to my room to shower and recuperate before my second concert. 

     The second concert also went very well. It was at a church within a senior care center, so most of the attendees were elderly people in their wheelchairs, who were incredibly appreciative. My family was also sweet enough to come for the first half hour (which was sadly the hardest-to-appreciate half), which was really fun for me. After the concert I headed into the city center to meet my family at one of the Christmas markets so they could buy me a glühwein (I love Germany and Christmas). Then I headed off to meet a friend at the nearby Medieval Christmas market in Wittelsbacher Platz. 

     I sadly didn't take any pictures, so I'll be sure to go back so I don't let you down. But basically picture a Christmas version of the Renaissance Faire! There were booths selling bows and arrows, belt knives, suits of armor, Renaissance dresses, homemade fruit wine (free samples!), and lots of other fun stuff, even fire-eaters up on top of one of the booths. The food was even more exciting: lots of delicious concoctions like cheese breads, Kaiserschmarren, noodles, Bratwurst, skewers of grilled meat wrapped in dough, and even a booth roasting an entire pig. Like, as in its little face looked at you as it turned over the fire. Eww. The highlight were the Feuerzangenbowlen. It's your typical glühwein, but with a sugar cube on the side and rum poured over the whole thing, then lit on fire. NOM. SO NOM. 

     The rest of the week was fairly more low-key. Tuesday night I went out to Tollwood, the huge Christmas market/festival on the Theresienwiese, the meadow where Oktoberfest takes place. The huge tents from Oktoberfest are present, but instead of being filled with drunken, beer-sodden maniacs, they're full of shopping booths! It's very similar to the huge trade show areas at county fairs. There were booths of everything: children's toys, weird clothes, handmade slippers, jam, a huge booth of mustard, pesto (one was called Li-Bi-Do, for Man and Woman. Aphrodisiac pesto=awkward?), picture frames, smelly soaps, and basically everything imaginable. A particularly memorable one was the booth of rare sausages: zebra, eland, gnu, and wild boar. 

SO MUCH SENF

German version of Teavana

Scary

     Yesterday and today were the kids' Christmas celebrations at the Kindergarten.  Any traditional kids' class ends before Christmas with a play, and this rule follows in Germany as well. Cliona's party on Thursday began with a cute play called "Ein Märchen im Schnee (A Fairytale in Snow)." Basically, man goes for a walk with his dog, drops his glove, animals use it for a bed. Very hard to follow with loud kids shrieking and not saying their lines, but very cute! Cliona, being one of the youngest, was a snowflake, and did a very cute little snowflake dance (that being spinning in a circle with some cotton in her hands). They then all sang a song, for which Cliona stood front in center with her hands up to her mouth giggling hysterically. Perhaps acting is not in her future.  Play is followed by salads and goodies and treats (and of course, the ubiquitous glühwein).

     Today was Kilian's play, the "Concert of the Animals." The kids were all dressed like different animals (from rabbit to sheep to mouse to cat to rooster to bird to elephant), and the little groups came out, played their instrument, the older kid in the group said a little poem, then they danced a little animal dance. Kilian was a bear, and he said his poem and danced super well. I was very proud.

Kilian's the tall one!

All the kids

Bears playing their tambourines 

Kilian in the middle. Note the little nose-picker on the left.

     And what did we do after the play? You guessed it. Ate goodies and drank glühwein. There are days when being an au pair can be tough, but my friends, today was not one of them! Unfortunately this batch was a little burnt, so it tasted a bit like someone had left coffee in the pot with the wine...

    Following the play, we headed briefly over to a friend of Anne's who was participating in an Adventskalendar party. The idea is that a neighborhood agrees on doing the party, and every night of Advent a different house hosts a gathering. Very low-key, just out in front of the house in the driveway/street, with glühwein and Kinderpunsch and perhaps some cookies. So we stood out in the bitter cold for half an hour or so, drinking glühwein and talking to people, while children ran pell-mell all around us. There were even chestnuts roasting (on a barbecue though. Rats.)! Alas, they always tasted better in my head. Then, full and freezing, we headed home.

     And here I am! The weekend holds not a lot of excitement--babysitting both Friday and Saturday nights, Sunday morning my choir is singing for mass at Alterpeter, the big church in the city center, and there's a caroling afternoon at the American church, so should be fairly relaxing! And then Monday Nate flies in from Sofia for two weeks, my family departs for Ireland on Wednesday, and Christmas joy really begins!

      

Fröhlichen Nikolaus! and some more Christmas Traditions (Part 2 of ?)

     Happy Nikolaus day!

     Don't worry, I had no idea before I came here either. But today I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up to a boot full of goodies outside my door!

 

     St. Nikolaus was far better to me than he was to the kids. Chocolate-cinnamon covered almonds and Lindt chocolate with rum filling = LOVE. As well as my Milka snowman, of course. Who now exists only in this photo. I was hungry.

Skip down to next bolded section to avoid cultural lesson

      I'm slowly catching on to how Christmas works here. St. Nikolaus, unlike our St. Nick, is not Santa Claus. He comes on December 6, his saint day, and fills boots with goodies, as well as being the one who fills up the advent calendar every night. He does not come down the chimney, he just sneaks in a door or window. He does dress in a Santa outfit, however. He also kindly visits kindergartens and fills up boots there as well! Busy guy!  Traditional Nikolaus treats are chocolate, fruit, and nuts (though bad children may find a rod or switch in their boot!) As my host mom was telling me, there are families who get big ol' presents from Nikolaus on the 6th, but I think that would take away from Christmas itself, wouldn't it? Apparently the reason St. Nikolaus Tag exists as it does is because of the Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther sought to sever the connection between saints and gift-giving, because it glorified saints inappropriately, and therefore St. Nikolaus couldn't be the one bringing gifts on Christmas Day. The Catholic response was to just switch his celebration to the 6th instead! 

      On Christmas itself, the present-bringer varies based on location. In Northern Germany it's Weihnachtsmann (literally, Christmas Man), who is basically just Santa Claus. In Southern Germany, gifts are brought by the Christkindl: the Christ child. (In case you were wondering, it's the butchering of this German word that gives us the name Kris Kringle.)  Germans scoff at separation of church and state. Seriously. 

      The primary Christmas celebration takes place not on the 25th but on the 24th: our Christmas Eve, the Germans' Heiliger Abend (Holy Evening). Presents are brought and put under the tree (in a locked room) at nightfall on the 24th (and bear in mind that this far north, that's like 4 PM by that time of year). All the presents are opened that night, and the 25th is a day for the Christmas feast and going to church. 

End informative section

      Okay, I'm done lecturing on German Christmas traditions now. I'm sort of sad my host family will be out of town for Christmas, because it would be really exciting to see all this first hand with little kids who still believe in Santa, but I'm sure Christmas will be amazing nonetheless. Nikolaustag was fun enough though. And the Advent calendar (a giant cloth hanging one on the wall, with little pouches for each day) is a kick--I put Kilian to bed the other night, and before we went up he insisted on puffing open the pouch for the next day, to make it easier for Nikolaus to get the treat in. As we headed up the stairs, he confided, "Laura, sometimes when I am already in bed I sneak out to the stairs to see if I can see Nikolaus sneaking in the window with treats!" Precious! 

      My kiddos are turning my hair grey, I think, but continue to be adorable and hilarious and a lot of fun. I swear, Cliona enjoys the trouble she gets into when she refuses to eat her dinner, but it's pathetically easy to get them to do what I want. For example:

      Me:        Cliona, I need you to eat five more forks.

      Cliona:  No! I want not that! I want not to eat!

      Me:       Okay, I guess we're going to your room to go to bed now!

      Cliona:  No! I eat! I eat!

As I said, pathetically easy. 

      The newest fight (well, the new version of an old fight) is about who gets to sit on my knee (not lap, that's American). I've settled with the rule of both or none (picking one leads to more screaming than my ears care for), so now they fight over who gets what leg. My favorite pair of jeans has holes in it (intentional ones; thanks, American Eagle, I really needed that breath of fresh air on my thigh when it's 25 degrees out), so they fight over who gets to sit on the leg with the bigger hole. Seriously? 

      Cliona has been very into her baby doll recently, and it's the most hilarious thing to sneakily listen to her play with it. Conversations usually revolve around her disciplining Baby, who I'm glad isn't real, as she frequently bites and hits Cliona. It is seriously the funniest thing. 

      We got our first real snow today! Didn't stick, as the temperature's hovering right around freezing and so the precipitation has a lot of trouble making up its mind whether it's snow or rain, but it was beautiful anyway. I'm really hoping we get a real snow before Christmas! California me would be incredibly excited. 

      I have my first choir concerts this weekend! We for some reason just started singing the Christmas music like three weeks ago, so it seems pretty shaky at this point, but I was assured things always come together at the concerts. It's fun being Christmasy!

     I went this Sunday to a sing-along Messiah at the local Episcopal church, about 40 minutes from my house. It was a real piece of home, with basically all English speakers there, and it was really a lot of fun, despite being coldy and therefore probably sounding pretty bad. The same church hosts a carol singing evening a couple of weeks from now, so I'll more than likely go to that as well! It's just not Christmas without Messiah. The soloists were all pretty impressive (with the notable exception of the soprano singing the recits......ouch). There was also a raffle for gift baskets, and I was arm-twisted into buying a ticket for the "American basket," temptingly loaded to the brim with PopSecret, Oreos, marshmallow whip, and other goodies I miss a sad amount.  

      After the Messiah, I scurried home to help out my family with their glühwein party. Consisting of about 20 people and their cumulative 20 children, chili, tabouleh (made by yours truly), a lot of cookies and crackers, and a truly incredible amount of homemade glühwein, it was really a lot of fun. Though I was technically there "working," my family is super cool and my mug of glühwein was refilled every time it got slightly empty. And really, working consisted of making sure no kids fell down the stairs and feeding them pasta at about 6 PM. I finished off the Christmasy day by watching "The Santa Clause" online. 

      And that's about it! The rest of the week continues as normal; Anne and Michael are out overnight this weekend so I get to have the kids all night and the next morning as well (which I guess means I get to fill up the Advent calendar? YES!), then next week consists of a lot of kid's christmas plays/parties/shows. This time of year is way too much fun! I apologize for the major scattered-ness of this blog entry!

Silly kids eating Nikolaus chocolate after kindergarten