Frohe Weihnachten!

Merry Christmas Family and Friends!

We had a wonderful Christmas week with friends.

On Christmas Eve, Mandy and Greg hosted a potluck dinner for about 25 people. All the food was delicious and we had a great time catching up with friends. There were also 6 toddlers and babies which made the evening even more fun!

Christmas day, we had a relaxing morning, waking up late and opening gifts. In the afternoon, we went to Dan and Kristi's for a delicious dinner with several friends. We had a great afternoon catching up with friends and interacting with 3-year old twin girls!

On Saturday evening, we continued to celebrate the Christmas season at Mike and Susan's annual party. Mike prepared an amazing food spread again this year and we had a great time socializing.

As you can tell, we have a wonderful group of friends out here, we don't know what we would do without them. Of course they don't replace our family and friends back home, we miss you all a lot and hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas:

From Christmas 2008

Marché de Noël in Alsace, France

We spent the weekend of 12 December in Alsace, France with Melanie and Adam. Alsace is a region of France right over the French-German border. We originally booked this trip back in the summer because several friends recommended a quaint B&B to us. Since the B&B is booked pretty far in advance, we decided to go in December and tour the Strasbourg and Colmar Christmas markets.

The B&B, the Ambiance Jardin, was even more picturesque than we imagined. The rooms were amazing and there was a common area complete with a fireplace where we were able to read and play games in the evenings! The breakfasts were delicious as well, fresh bread, fruit cobbler, and café au lait. In the back of the B&B there is an amazing garden. Of course nothing was blooming now, but we were able to imagine that it would be beautiful in the spring and summer.

Below are pictures of the B&B:

Bed and Breakfast

We stopped in Strasbourg on Friday afternoon. We have been to Strasbourg before and really like its relaxing atmosphere. The Christmas market had a lot of things that we don't normally see in the German Weihnacht markets. We made the trip complete with panini and crepes!

Here are some pictures from Strasbourg:

Strasbourg Christmas Market

Friday evening, after we checked into the B&B, we found the only restaurant in the tiny town to be closed. Relying on our GPS, we found an Italian Trattoria about 10km (6 miles) away. As we're driving, over country roads we realized, too late to turn around, that we were getting on a ferry and crossing back over into Germany! We drove all the way to France and now were going to have dinner in Germany?!? Of course, the trattoria no longer existed, so we ended up having schnitzel and kase spatzle at a German restaurant for dinner. *sigh* =)

On Saturday, we went to Colmar, Eguisheim, and Kayserberg. They are all picturesque towns. While we found the Colmar market to be mostly meat and wine and the smaller towns to have tiny markets, we really enjoyed the scenery. We would like to go back in a warmer season to walk around more and see more of the area.

Here are some pictures from Colmar:

Colmar Christmas Market

A few from Eguisheim:

Eguisheim Christmas Market

And a couple from Kayserberg:

Kayserberg Christmas Market