Christmas-y Weekend

Aside from not having my Christmas cards yet (I assume they're in a pile in the mail room), my holiday shopping and decorating and festing is almost over. The boxes that N and I sent to our families arrived today in their respective states, so that's a load off. It took less than a week for them to get from podunk Germany to podunk Illinois and Ohio. Hats off to the USPS.

We spent the weekend catching the Christmas spirit. Friday night we watched the old version of Miracle on 34 Street, which I LOVED. It's pretty funny, whether it's supposed to be or not. N liked it too, but we found the neighbor guy a little creepy at first. Inviting the neighbor's daughter over while you drink coffee and smoke a pipe? Odd. I checked out both the old version and a newer one from the library, but N scoffed at the one made this century. I appreciated a good scoff, so I let him get away with it.

One of our neighbors brought us some mistletoe last week. By "some mistletoe" I mean a branch larger than my head. It looks NOTHING like the plastic stuff you buy in a box from the grocery store. Instead of hanging the entire thing over our bed, we cut it up and it now takes us twice as long to get from room to room in our house because we have to stop at every doorway and kiss.


On Sunday we went to Trier to see the Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas market, which was great. It was teeming with people and we could have eaten our way from the brat booth to the waffle booth to the pizza booth to the sweet dumpling booth...instead we just got a mug with some gluhwein and called it a day. We also got a wreath in leiu of a Christmas tree, and I found an old nail hole in the wall to hang it on. It's beautiful and smells delicious! Our friends Laurie and Matt decorated their tree last week, and we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation at their place on Saturday night. It was so cozy and fun. I'm glad their taste in holiday movies matches ours!

I'm glad the Germans love Christmas- it's so much better than trying to feel festive with a bunch of cacti around...