Happy Birthday Steve!

We had a nice day celebrating Steve today! We started with church at Andechs Monastery followed by Steve's favorite breakfast there - weißwurst and pretzel. After breakfast we sat at our cozy table playing hearts with the girls.

We had a relaxing day at home, decorating for Christmas and watching F1 racing and NFL football and of course there was apple pie for birthday cake.

Before baking...

The girls were in charge of candles!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Courtesy of Stefanie & Rachel

For the second year in a row we hosted our friends for a Thanksgiving dinner. Both years we had 38 people. This year 19 adults and 19 young adults. And it was fabulous! We move much of the furniture out of our living room/dining room and move in two biergarten tables.

Everyone brings at least one dish to share, there are many desserts and of course lots of drinks!

The cooking is done!

The food was absolutely delicious, everyone out did themselves with their cooking. Our friend Lois cooked a yummy turkey the traditional way and Steve cooked two. He did one in the turkey fryer and a second one on his weber grill. Both were a huge success.

Chris & Steve - ready for the weber!

Right out of the turkey fryer

Steve and Ken are ready to carve

A typical plate

An added bonus of this Thanksgiving was the son of our good friends who is studying in Rome came to stay for Thanksgiving break. It was so awesome to have Chris here. And truly if we can't have the brothers here, Chris is the next best thing. He and AJ have been friends since first grade!

Rachel, Chris & Stefanie

We are so thankful that we have made such wonderful friends and that when we can't be with our family in the US we get to celebrate with our Munich family!!

Stefanie's Final Volleyball Tournament

Stefanie has played varsity volleyball at Munich International School for five years and she has been captain for the last three. We have had so much fun watching her play all these years. The volleyball team closes the season with an eight team tournament every November. This year it was in Athens. We had promised Stef last year we would come to watch her, Steve had to fly in on day 2 from the US but we were there!

Stefanie is #3

Three other families traveled with us to Athens which made for fun game watching and evenings. Stefanie and her teammates weren't with us in the evenings; students stay with families from the host school and in turn when teams travel to our school we host them. It's a really nice system that exposes the kids to different cultures and lifestyles as well as teaching them about being a guest and being a host.

Acropolis view from our hotel

We stayed in the center of Athens at a fabulous hotel. This allowed us to explore the city when we weren't watching games and also let me get some morning runs in, who doesn't want to run by the FIRST Olympic stadium? Steve and I had already taken the kids to Athens so we did some low key site seeing and visited the Acropolis Museum.

Outside the Olympic Stadium

The girls played their hearts out but their high hopes of a championship were dashed as it became apparent that six of the eight teams were very evenly matched. Most of their sets went to maximum points and several went past 25 points. In the end they finished fifth but they were able to brag that they were the only team that beat the winning team!

Steve, Stefanie & Missy

Our friend Denise celebrated her birthday while we were there and the adults had a lovely rooftop dinner. We had some delicious food, it was only topped by the fun company!

The tournament ended late afternoon on Saturday so we had to fly home Sunday morning. I know, poor us. The girls also stayed in a hotel that night so after a little Athens touring they joined us for dinner. Where do you take 10 high school girls for dinner? Hard Rock Cafe of course - everyone was happy!

First Snowman of the Season

We got our first real snow of the season and it was perfect for snowman building. Rachel and I were the only ones home so we got out there and made the cutest snowman, and yes we used most of the snow in the backyard!