Thanksgiving 2012

I love the winter holidays! It's a fun time of the year.  It seems so silly though to make a big Thanksgiving meal for just the three of us so I love to invite friends over so I have an excuse to do some great baking. 

With having 4 floors to our house it makes each level rather small, so it's difficult sometimes to have lots of people over.  I would love to have the space we have, but on 2 floors instead of the 4 we have.  When we have company over it's always a delimma as to how to seat everyone.  Our table can seat 6, but we had invited 12 in addition to ourselves.  Sam suggested bringing in the fest table and benches that we usually have on the back patio during the summer.  I was very against it at first, but after moving our table to the guest room it actually fit quite nicely.  There was space enough for the adults to sit at the table and then we had Elly's little table set for the little kids.  The friends we invited are very comfortable so it was a fun evening.  Not much stress other than just getting the meal made.  I managed to get a few pictures before everyone arrived, but then forgot to take some of the guests! Anyhow, here is a look at our Thanksgiving (only four months later!).

 

 

 

~ A few family photos from the evening ~

Kinder German Lanternelaufen (11/19/2012)

You may remember that last year we had a Kinder German teacher, Frau Schill, come to our house once a week.  I had two other friends and their kids join us and it was just an hour a week that Frau Schill taught the kids German words and songs.  After the kid's lesson we ladies would have a mini German lesson. We only kept that up for 3 months and then summer hit and we all were going to be stateside at different times, so we cancelled them for the summer.

We planned to pick it up again in the fall, but by then we didn't know if we wanted to do it again.  So, in October my friend, Kim, and I signed our girls up for the Kinder German class on base.  Frau Schill is the teacher, so it was basically what we had last year (minus the adult lessons), but I didn't have to have it right in my house.  Elly wasn't participating for quite awhile.  To the point where I was considering not signing her back up, but then she started singing the songs in class and seemed to enjoy it, so we've stuck with it.

 Toward the middle of November, the class had a Lantern Walk (Lanternelaufen) around base. I'm not entirely sure what the whole meaning of it is, but do know it's somehow connected to St. Martin's Day on the 11th of November. To us it was just a fun little German tradition to join in on.  We got little German lanterns for the girls to carry and we walked around base singing Lanternelaufen songs.   In all honesty, it was very cold, so I was kind of glad when it was done :) Anyhow, here are a few pictures from our Lantern Walk.

 

 

 

The reality of our evening was this....Elly riding on Daddy's shoulders. 

I think she missed the memo that it was a Lantern WALK.  :)

Portugal (11-15 November 2012)

I've given up on trying to match the date of my post with the actual date I'm blogging about.  I'm really trying to get caught up on this blog, but it sure takes time.  Yes, it's the middle of March and I'm just getting around to posting about a trip we took back in November.  Such is life...

We've not done much travelling in the last couple of years and want to change that. It's so easy to get caught up in life and think we have plenty of time for trips at a later date.  The reality though is that we've been in Germany for almost 6 years already and time is not slowing down.  If we return to the states at the end of our 10 years in this house we only have about 4-5 more years.  We still don't know what we're going to do though because of the economy and the possibility of not finding a job in the states when it's time to go back.  But....we figure we better start checking places off our list because time is going fast and there are still LOTS of places we'd like to see.

So, with that in mind we decided to visit Portugal in November.  We went for 5 days in the middle of November and really enjoyed our time there.  It's a beautiful country with wonderful people.  The people were so nice and friendly. We sometimes forget that all foreigners are not like the Germans :) 

My sweet husband has found a gold mine in Ryan Air.  It's very cheap....and for good reason.  There are no assigned seats, you pay for any luggage you take and carry on limitations are very strict.  They must be within the size and weight limits or you get charged extra...and they definitely check.  Your carry on must be one piece.  If you have a purse or laptop it must fit into the carry on or you get charged extra.  We actually saw this happen.  A little girl had a tiny rolling carry on with a small bag attached to the top.  The combination of both pieces was much smaller than the carry on limit, but since the extra bag would not fit into her carry on the parents were charged 50 Euro on the spot. They really do charge for e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.  We usually pay for one piece of luggage that can weight about 30 lbs and then we have our carry ons. 

It's not necessarily my favorite way to travel because it's a hassle trying to get our seats together with no assigned seating.  The Germans are good at pushing their way to the front of the line, so we really have to stand our ground.  On one of the flights I didn't think we were going to get seats together so I told one of the crew that I needed to sit with my 3 year old and she simply said I would just have to see if someone would change seats.  They wouldn't do anything to help.  It turned out alright and Elly didn't have to sit by herself among strangers, but I was shocked that they wouldn't help out in that situation. 

Anyhow, so we flew into Porto and stayed one night there before heading on down to Lisbon.  We only had one day in Porto, so we asked the hotel staff where they would suggest spending our time and they told us down by the river.  They said it's usually the view you see of Porto in advertisements.  So we took a taxi, which was an experience all on it's own.  I would not want to drive there.  They just make up their own lanes and don't seem to slow down for anyone.  

Before you think I've gone and lost my mind with how many pictures I'm posting, just keep in mind that it's a fraction of those I took :)  The choice of which pictures to post was very hard.  Ok, enough rambling from me.  Here is a look at our stay in Portugal. 

Looking out over Porto from our hotel room

Walking along the Douro River.

We walked across the Dom Luis bridge and looked back across the river to where the previous pictures were taken.  We took a cable car ride up to the top of the hill and had a beautiful view.  That was about all we had time for in Porto because we had to get back to the hotel and get to the train station for our ride to Lisbon. 

This was looking down on the area we were at earlier

The train ride from Porto to Lisbon was about 3 hours. It was a great way to travel.  I really thought Elly might take a nap and even made her lay down and try...it didn't work.  Too much excitement for a little girl to go to sleep. 

Once we arrived in Lisbon and got into a taxi Elly couldn't keep her eyes open

The little alley that led to our apartment.

 



Looking out over Lisbon from our top floor window

Rossio Square was just down the hill from our apartment

 

One day we took a tram down to the parish of Belem. There was a beautiful monastery there. Jeronimos Monastery was built in the 1500's. The architecture was just beautiful.

 



We have a future photographer in our midst.  Elly loves to get my camera and take pictures.  We've started using her to get photos of us together :)  She does pretty good.

 

  All over Lisbon we saw these carts selling roasted chestnuts.  On this particular day I hadn't eaten all morning and was hungry, so decided to try them.  They were not great, but not too bad either.

 

 

 

 

Across the street from Jeronimos Monastery is this monument.  It's called Padrao dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries).  I don't really know much more than that, but it was pretty impressive.

A short walk from the monument is the Belem Tower (Torre de Belem).  It was built in 1515 as a fortress to guard the entrance to Lisbon's harbor. From what I understand, it used to be right on the shore, but with time it goes further and further out due to erosion of the shore.

 

Who cares about an old castle when you have nice sand to play in?

This picture is looking out of one of the windows in the Belem Tower.  The Monument of Discoveries is in the distance.

 

This elevator, the Santa Justa Lift, has been in use since 1907.  It takes you up to a higher street.  Not sure why an elevator was needed for that, but it was interesting.

 

We took this picture from on top of the elevator.  It is looking out over Rossio Square toward where we stayed.  Our apartment is circled. 

 

One of our days in Lisbon we decided to join a tour group to show us other parts of the area.  One of our stops on the tour was at the Pena Palace in the town of Sintra.  It dates back to the 1840's, which is not that old in Europe.  The queen married a German architecture, who built much of this palace.  It reminded me a lot of many castles we've visited here in Germany.  I guess now we know why :)

 

My tired little girl.  It's so hard for her to get the sleep she needs when we travel.

The remains of a Moorish castle can be seen down the hill from the Pena Palace.

After touring the Pena Palace we stopped in Sintra for lunch.  Afterward, we visited some ceramic tiles shops and other tourist shops.

We ate at a restaurant called Piriquita up this alley.

 

 

From Sintra we drove on to Cabo da Roca,

which is the western most point of the European continent.

 

From there we drove on down the coastline to Cascais, a very wealthy area of Portugal. The shoreline was beautiful. Our driver directed us to a popular ice cream shop.  We owed it to Elly after being so good all day driving in the van.  She's such a great little traveller!

Sam was letting the water get right up to them then running.  Elly had a blast!

 

Elly was sharing her peanut butter sandwich with the birds. 

 

And that sums up our trip to Portugal.  The next day we took the train back to Porto and flew back to Germany.  It was a nice trip.  It's fun to see other countries and check them off our list.  Elly will be a very well travelled little girl by the time we return to the states.