Christmas at home.

Ok, so I know I am still behind. But I am doing my best I swear.

So after a few back to back trips and with a busy January planned we decided to stay home for Christmas.

The celebration began on Saturday morning before Christmas we participated in run Santa run. Phil was not all that excited but he went along anyway.  What is run Santa run you might ask well it was anything but a run. It was a leisurely stroll through the streets of Vicenza dressed as Santa.  We met up with a bunch of other people and though we started in front of the start line we were among the last to finish.

 

Sunday we continued the celebration by seeing the NutCracker at a local theater. As it started and throughtout the first act we all thought it was a completely different play.  Turns out I totally forgot 80% of it; if I am honest probably forgot all of it except the toy soldier part of course.  I was so convinced that it was completely different, which was possible since it was the Italian interpretaion, that I watched the movie a few days after Christmas -- turns out they were very similar. Despite the confusion it was a fun night with good friends. 

Beautiful Theater

Joy, Mike, Phil, Me, and Cat (taking the pictures)

 

The program

You can see Cat's hand in this picture

We had a nice dinner party with friends on Christmas Eve - everyone brought a few appetizers and some desert - there was more than enough and everything was wonderful which is evident by the fact that the only picture we took all night was of the food.  

Dinner with Joy, Mike, Lauren, Jim, and Lydia

In between eating and drinking (I even made homemade baileys for everyone like mom does) we played both the Newlywed game (which I will admit Phil & I lost) and Catch Phrase (which the girls won despite attempts by the boys to cheat).

Christmas day it was just the two of us.

We got up and opened presents while the sweet petals baked :)

 

This is my second year making sweet petals on my own - last year they were great but I don't remember it feeling like home - this year it was like Gram was right next to me while we were making them because it took us three tries... first batch I forgot to scould the milk - second batch I added something before I was supposed to - third batch worked great and were perfect on Christmas morning with homemade eggnog (a new tradition).

Our stockings hung by the heater with care...

If you don't see your card it is because

we got MOST of them after Christmas.

You can see our advent calendar in this picture

Even though it was just the two of just Phil humored me and allowed me to make a traditional dinner with most of the fixings but in moderation.

One nice part about living in Italy is the the Christmas holiday lasts a lot longer -- why you might ask well because despite making sure there were no packages waiting for us on Monday we continued to get gifts for the next week in the mail. And in fact this week we got another package that got lost in the system for a while.

The "winning" gift of the year was that Phil got me a really nice new digital camera, which I have to say he steals from me most of the time... but thats ok we are getting great pictures and I am looking forward to taking a photo class so I can learn to really use it but that will have to wait till after I finish my masters (but we are getting close).

 

 

We got a lot of nice gifts from family and friends who we miss dearly- Thank you!

Wurzburg, Erfurt & Bolzano - TDS Europe Dinner

The second week of December we took another trip to Germany, this time to Wurzburg for a Christmas party with all the other defense attorneys in Europe. As it did last year my trip started with snow.  I had decided that we should leave early Friday morning like 6am. Phil was reluctant but when I got up and saw the 3 inches of snow already on the ground and that it was still falling. I got him on board really quickly.  This was a good choice, and we arrived safely in Wurzburg around 3 with plenty of time to nap before the party. And thank goodness we did because it turned into a late night!

 

TDS - Europe

Ladies of 175th OBC

Me, Meg, & Johanna (just missing Jessie)

The dinner was held at the Residence which is a beautiful place (that for some reason we don't have our own picture of) and the food was amazing. After dinner we joined some of the other TDS attorneys for a few more drinks at a variety of locations and then meandered our way home lost, cold, and wet from the rain.

Given Friday nights events we had a late start on Saturday but we made it to Erfurt for a Christmas market. We parked outside of town at a soccer stadium that happened to have a game going on and took a little tram into downtown. This was the best part, seeing the old city streets and the different areas of the town which were quite unique.  Downtown was a little busy for our tastes but very nice. We enjoyed walking through some of the less crowded areas and then had some gluwein and a pretzel (another German staple) before taking the tram back to our car and heading back to Wurzburg.

In Wurzburg we explored the Christmas market there which is quite large and mostly centralized which is actually somewhat unusual for Christmas markets which tend to sprawl around and through the cities. Sunday we walked around Wurzburg a little more to see some things in the light and then we headed to Bolzano.  In addition to the great Christmas market, Wurzburg has a number of truly beautiful buildings; it is a charming town.

 

 

Bolzano is a small Italian town on the south side of the Alps; it was really cold! Bolzano also had a Christmas market which we strolled around – this is one of my favorite markets thus far though not necessarily my favorite town. Don’t get me wrong there was nothing wrong with the town it just didn't have the charm of Rotenberg for instance.

 

The next day, Monday, we had planned to stop at two other markets on our way home – Phil was going to be a good sport but he couldn't hide his excitement when I could see his excitement  when we learned (luckily before we drove there) that they were not open during the week. So we decided to stop if Soave which is just 30 minutes from us and which we have been meaning to do for a while but anyway but of course it is also closed on Monday.  So we made it home a little earlier than we had planned but again a nice weekend overall.

This was our last trip of 2012!