Happy New Year! And Where did December go?--Woche 45-49

Well, here we are again, at the start of a new year.  I can't believe how fast the past few months have gone.  Ask Dan--I still complain about not knowing where the summer went, and here we are, already past Christmas and even New Years.  We've had quite a few adventures in the past little while.  I will try to highlight the major ones.

We had some good friends come and stay with us for a week.  We had a fabulous time with them.  We loved getting to show them our city a little bit.  Our favorite is getting to sample all the foods with our guests.  We did a lot of touristy stuff.  We took them downtown, ate Kaise Krainers, ice cream, and walked downtown with the huge lit red balls, and the street lit with giant chandeliers made out of Christmas lights. 

We took them to Christmas markets (they were so busy that we could hardly move in some of them).  We drank the kinder punch (left the Gluckwein alone).  They serve these at every Christmas market (along with Langos--yum!)  When you buy a cup, they serve them in real ceramic mugs.  You pay a deposit on the mug as well as for the drink.  Then when you are finished, you can return the mug and they will give you your deposit back.  If you don't, you are welcome to use the mug as a souvenir.  I didn't pay too much attention to the dishwasher set up in the completely outdoor settings of the stands, but no one got sick.  The one drawback was that our friend, Scott, was allergic to both our cats and the horses from the Spanish Riding School.  We just had one trip to the ER on Sunday afternoon during church--then all was better.  The highlight of the touristy rounds for Dan, was getting to see Elizabeth again.  We love that musical!

While they were here, our friends bought us a very traditional Austrian Christmas decoration that I had been searching for, but had not yet found it.  It is called a Weihnachtspyramide (Christmas pyramid).  They are wooden nativities that are usually on 4 levels that have candles around them.  The heat from the candles, cause the wooden fan at the top to spin, thus bringing your nativity to life.  They are really cool, and you can get all kinds of them.  Even single leveled ones.  Other traditional Christmas decorations are the smoking men.  They are wooden men that you put incense inside and the smoke comes out their mouths, like they are smoking a pipe.  They have tons of different variations on the two different decorations.  Our friends also picked up a small metal tree that you light a tea light under and the heat causes the tree to spin around.  All of these are very cool.

 

 

The kids wrapped up their school work and last little Christmas exchanges and we packed our bags!  We left for our flight to Canada very early Friday morning.  The flights were better than I had expected.  Danyon didn't get antsy until the last hour of the flight into Calgary.  We were home in time for dinner Friday night.  We loved seeing and spending time with family.  It was so nice to be able to go to a Walmart, eat real pizza, and completely understand conversations going on around us!  We were all very exhausted and had a hard time with jet lag and the time change.  We were all up at 3:00am for several nights.  Danyon took it the hardest, though.  Dan got the stomach flu and was pretty miserable for Christmas Eve and uneasy for a few days after that.  We spent a lot of time getting some much needed rest.

I don't care what day it is . . .
Do you know what time it is
where I'm from?

Maybe it's not so bad after all

The kids loved having everyone at Grandma's house for Christmas.  All of Dan's siblings and us were stuffed into Grandma's house and it made for a fun time for all the cousins.  It was the best part of the whole year for Dane.  Santa was able to find us at Grandma's house and Christmas was pretty much a huge success.

A few days later, we were on another flight to Denver.  We were excited to see all of my family and to spend New Years with them.  We had a great time with my family, too.  Our kids got to spend time with most of their cousins on my side.  We really enjoyed spending time with everyone, and enjoyed running all our errands and shopping at yet even more Walmarts, and other stores that we do not have in Austria.



Casa Bonita--go for the atmosphere, not the food

All the kids were able to make it to midnight on New Year's Eve (except Deagan, who fell asleep on the couch an hour early and Danyon who was sent to bed without a choice in the matter.)  It was quite the New Year's Party with Grandma playing charades.  If you know her, ask her about it.  (It's not the first time she's pulled "off" something like this at a family party!--She might deny it, but the rest of us can't stop blushing!) 

That's right, mom showed
 us all up!

We got to drive up to Fort Collins to see our old stomping grounds, but more importantly, to see some old friends.  We loved staying with our friends and hanging out.  Unfortunately, the rest of the family all got sick that week, so that made it pretty fun.  Nothing worse than having the best Mexican restaurant food in front of you, but not being able to eat it.  Dane didn't get sick until we got home, but suffice to say, we all got it.  Dan and I got a chance to go to a movie together and to spend some time shopping.  Time was again flying at warp speed, and before we knew it, it was time to pack up and head back home.



Danyon climbing for coconuts

The flight home wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.  Danyon traveled much better in that direction.  Maybe we were a little less excited and hyper, too.  We were able to make our tight connection, even with over an hour delay in take-off on the first flight.  We returned home Monday evening.  We were able to get everything unpacked and ready for the week.  Dan had to go work the next day, and the kids were to start school first thing Tuesday morning.

I woke the kids up on Tuesday morning, and all I got was rude comments and crying.  I figured that it wasn't worth it, and decided to let the kids sleep in a little.  I finally woke them all up at 10:30 and then took them to school--all except Dane, who was sick that morning).  Danyon, Dane, and I did a couple of things around the house, but really couldn't focus on much, so we felt bad for Dan and the other kids, while we sat on the couch and watched movies for the rest of the day.  Everyone was back into school and work on Wednesday.  Dane even had his saxophone lesson.  Thursday, we added hockey for Dane.  Friday, we had appointments to renew our residency cards.  The kids got another break from the morning school.  They really needed the sleep in time.  We bought a couple of new movies from the store and had a chicken wing/movie night.  Interesting tid bit:  In the movie section of the store, you can find all the different movie types.  There were comedies, family movies, horror, action, etc.  You'll never guess what I found, just to the left of the Westerns.  There was subtitle for Easterns.  I thought that was pretty funny.  They had all kinds of kung-fu and Jackie Chan type movies in that section.  Also, for those wondering, the Special Interest grouping of movies here in Austria contained one or two exercise videos, a couple dance videos, and the rest made me blush so much that I couldn't even take a picture of it.  Just thought it was especially interesting.

Much to everyone's horror, we spent Saturday taking down and cleaning up all the Christmas stuff.  We blasted the Christmas music one last time, and then we cried as we cleaned.  Dan and I decided to go on a date Saturday night.  He took me to our first Austrian Mexican restaurant.  I know that it was nothing compared to the one in Colorado, but it wasn't bad, for here.  We got to go to the Wiener Konzert Haus for "Der Nacht der Musicals" (Night of the Musicals).  We loved the show.  It was so much fun.  They had highlights from all kinds of musicals that we love, and a couple that we didn't know. 

We still don't feel entirely back to normal yet, but we are well on our way.  If you can judge how much of a good time you had, by the amount of weight gained, then, we had the time of our lives--even with everyone getting sick.  So, this next week, will have a lot of new beginnings.  Back to school, back to work, back to cleaning the house, laundry, hockey, music, diet, and unfortunately, exercise.  We'll see how it goes.

These are Marzipan creations.  The Austrians have several good luck charms that they bring
 out at New Years:  a pig, a mushroom, a horse shoe, a cat, a guy with a ladder, etc.  You can find
them all in marzipan, on cards, on pictures, whatever.