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.
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!
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!
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.
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 :)
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?