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.

Christmas is Coming

We started off the Christmas season a few days before Thanksgiving by having our 2nd annual Christmas cookie making session. We started about 9am and finished about 9 or 10pm. It was a fun day and just a little chaotic. We mixed, baked, iced and decorated to our heart's content. The kids were interested for about the first 30 minutes and then they just wanted to play and eat the finished product. We distributed them to the men's co-workers, neighbors and friends. Most of whom think American Christmas cookies are great - something you'd never find in Switzerland.

Our Christmas tree is up! Tom and I love the Christmas traditions. The Friday before Thanksgiving we scoured the stores in Fribourg and found one that had Christmas trees. We had an enjoyable evening of trimming the tree while listening to Christmas music. This tree is much better than last year's (click for picture) and was less expensive. This is a half-way done shot; finalized tree picture to be posted soon. Oh, and the curtains are up, too - Tom and I finally agreed on and purchased curtains for the living room. What do you think?

My cats don't understand that this cute little hat was made especially for them. Try as I might I couldn't get them to sit still and pose for the camera. These are the best shots - the ones where they weren't squirming out of my grasp :)

Halloween and Birthday

Backing up a little bit... My birthday was about a month ago and Kacey and Lu surprised me with a super cute flip-flop cake. We went to their house for dinner (on Halloween) in costume to surprise the girls. Tom was dressed as a beach goer and I was ... well, I wore a camouflage shirt and hat. I realized as I was hunting around my house for good costume clothes, that I'd left most of my non-essential clothes items in Atlanta. So I did the best I could. It was fun to get into the spirit of things, though.

It was in the 30s outside and Tom was in shorts and sandals. We went to an outdoor Halloween party in the Burgess's neighborhood that night and Tom went as you see above. Just another thing for the Swiss to shake their heads at and say, "Crazy Americans!"

Like my Halloween toe socks?

England Photos

Our England Trip

We visited Oxford and many of the various colleges there. These gargoyle type heads were all over many of buildings.

Us in one of the college courtyards. We took a guided tour of the city and saw dining halls, chapels and courtyards that were just beautiful.

A college dormitory and dining hall.

The famous pub where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein used to meet with other friends. We had coffee and a piece of pie here. It took close to 30 minutes to get the drinks and another 20 or so to get our pie (which we then ate in about 5 minutes :)

Tom and Katie with Richard and Emma - newly married! They stayed around for day after their wedding, so we got to hang out with them a little. Then they left for their honeymoon to Malaysia - fun!

Sunday, November 8 was Remembrance Day to honor all of the war veterans. This parade went down the street right outside our hotel.

I loved the red phone booths all over the place.

The Tower Bridge.

Buckingham Palace - no changing of the guard that day.

In a wet Trafalgar Square.

The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum.

A real mummy at the British Museum.

Tom's artistic picture of the Tower Bridge. We took the little tour of it and got to walk across the pedestrian path seen at the top. The bottom section can move up to let boats through - the official name (in case you want to know) is a bascule bridge.

We got dressed up and went to see Les Miserables while in London.

London Bridge

Kensington Palace. We were going to tour this, too, but we got our times mixed up :( I thought last entry was at 5, but it was at 4:00. Oh well - there's always next time. It was hard to do everything we wanted to do because things opened around 10:00 and closed at 4:00 or 5:00.

However, we did manage to make it in time for tea at the Orangery - right behind Kensington Palace. It was wonderful!! The sandwiches were dainty, the scones soft and delicious, the jams delectable and the tea cakes a variety of yumminess. This was one of my favorite things that we did on the trip. Tom endured it and ate a hamburger later.

We found a plaque dedicated to Switzerland in London.


We stopped at Stonehenge on our way to Bath. It's amazing to think that this structre is probably over 4,000 years old.

The Roman bath was probably my favorite site that we visited. The hot springs are still there just like they were 2,000 years ago. You can see the steam rising up from behind us. Some of the original plumbing still worked!

I got to visit the Jane Austen center. I really like her books and enjoyed learning more about her and seeing the town she lived in and wrote about.

We visited the Fashion Museum in Bath where I got to try on a corset and crinoline. Needless to say, they aren't the most comfortable things in the world.

William Shakespeare's birthplace and childhood home. Did you know his father made leather gloves for a living? That was news to me.

Shakespeare's grave. His wife, daugter and son-in-law are buried next to him.