Catching up in the USofA

We had a great time back home seeing friends and family. This is just a quick post of (most of) the people we saw and the good times we had with them.

We reunited with one of Tom's old co-workers and his wife (Phillip and Margaret) at their house for dinner one night. The food was great and the hanging out even better. The Burgesses joined the crowd and then we all posed in front of their HUGE, real Christmas tree.

My friend Danyel and her two girls, Zoey and Taelor, came over to Dothan to visit for an afternoon.

Christmas Eve with my family. We just got back from a lovely Christmas Eve service at my parent's church.

Christmas in the Mountains after Christmas with Tom's Family. We traveled from 4 different cities to converge on Fall Creek Falls State Park near Pikeville, TN. It's in the middle of nowhere, but was just beautiful.

On our way home from the TN mountains, we stopped in Chattanooga to see Lisa and Jeremiah. We went to Sticky Fingers - a wonderful Chattanooga rib place. Here are Lisa and Jeremiah chowing down on some ribs. The ribs were gooood. Sorry, J - I didn't have a better picture of ya!

My old college roomie Kimberly and college buddy Cristina. We had fun catching up at one of the numerous Starbucks in Kennesaw. Then we went to the mall and didn't find a single Georgia Tech sweatshirt for Cristina out of 2 department stores and 5 sports shops!! All the UGA you'd want, even Notre Dame, but no Tech. Just sad. Happily, she is now the owner of a GT sweatshirt after a visit to the GT bookstore.

December Happenings

After some getting used to, Maggie and Cloé enjoyed playing in the snow on the balcony.

We ventured to the Christmas market in Montreaux this year and ran into an Alphorn band! We saw a lot of neat crafts, but didn't buy anything except food - I even got cotton candy or barbe à papa (papa's beard) as they call it here.

In Montreaux on Lake Geneva. You wouldn't know it from the picture, but we are FREEZING! We had to forsake the market and go walk around the grocery store for 30 minutes so our feet would thaw.

Tom's birthday is in December and this year I decided to make a special cake for him. Tom loves meat - especially beef - especially steak and hamburgers. Living in Switzerland, meat is much more expensive, so he doesn't get to indulge as often as he would like. So I made him a hamburger cake to highlight his love of burgers. April (the master cake-maker!) let me do it at her house so it would be a surprise and gave me a hand. The ketchup is runny red icing, the lettuce is green candy, and there really are sesame seeds on top. It was a fun project and Tom was both surprised and impressed. The results tasted pretty good, too :)

A family picture. The cats were less than cooperative in this endeavor.

The tree with all the trimmings!

First Ski Trip of the Season

Tom had a day off in December, so we took advantage of the time and went skiing. We headed over to the German side of CH since it wasn't a holiday there so we could avoid crowds. It was a beautiful day! The sun was out and once you got skiing, it wasn't very cold at all. I regained some confidence on the nice, uncrowded blue runs and enjoyed being outdoors surrounded by the beautiful Alps.

Richard (a friend from Tom's work) joined us for the day.

The Geisheimers went as well - even 3 year-old Molly got into the action!

Thanksgiving

Looking back a little... This year all the American families got together again for Thanksgiving. I was in charge of making a turkey this year - my first one ever! It turned out well (thanks for the lessons Mom and Dad!) and the entire evening was full of delicious foods. And to top things off, Georgia Tech beat Georgia - GO JACKETS!!

By the way, having turkey in Switzerland is not a cheap undertaking - this 4kg (~9lb) turkey was $50! Maybe next year we'll have chicken.