New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve featured a party for the kids, fireworks, and a bonfire. You can see here how some kids are already tired. Ours lasted until 21:30 and then we had to put them in bed- not even the fireworks or kids playing in the hall right outside our room woke them up!

Jay and Nils loved going to the bar and ordering a Kinderschnapps (Sprite). The bartender would give it to them in a small snifter and they would toast and drink it with the other kids.

The bonfire at midnight also had Gluehwein (warm mulled wine) and it was perfect in the cold weather.

Diana Skiing

Yes, I finally learned how to ski! I took lessons for three days and I learned a lot. I was supposed to have four days of lessons, but someone (M!) returned my boots instead of his.

Here I am in the gondola, deathly scared. I HATE the gondola, especially when it just stops in the middle. For some reason, I am perfectly fine on the open chair lift. Go figure.


Here I am on the first run. I swear the hill is steeper when I am standing over it! By the second week, I made it down the entire mountain (not easy!) with Michael. I will post Jay's ski photos next.

Christmas in Austria

We have multiple Christmas traditions here. In Germany, the Christkind brings the presents on Christmas Eve, usually in the evening. We took that tradition, as well as Santa from the US (stockings only, to be filled overnight for the kids to discover on the morning of the 25th).

We wrote to both the Christkind and Santa to tell them we would be in Austria. The Christkind brought Jay his (finally!) lightsaber and Nils a Star Wars Captain Rex costume. Since we were still (trying to remain) asleep when the kids dug into their stockings, we have no photos of it. But the Christkind won the best gift prize this year anyway.

On the 26th, it snowed almost all day. The snow is too powdery to make a snowman or even snowballs, but we took some clumps of snow we found and buried Nils.

Food, Glorious Food!

Nils gives the food here two thumbs up!


































Jay eating with the kids from the Kinderbetreuung (Kiddie Care). He doesn't want to have anything to do with us anymore!

As practically everyone knows, Jay and Nils are not interested in food. For Jay, even sweets and dessert are not too interesting. Except ice cream, of course. Every night there is ice cream for dessert here. Naturally, the kids will eat so they can have ice cream. But it doesn't stop there- they really eat quite well here!

Austria at Night

Here are some photos of us at night. The hotel had a nighttime stroll with torch-candles. We also went to the local Weihnachtsmarkt. The temperature was -16 or so and very, very cold, so a Gluehwein was very welcome.

Austria Holiday

We were in Austria for two weeks to ski and relax. M was overdue for a long vacation and the boys and I really should learn to ski. We chose an amazing hotel; we can't believe how lucky we were. We searched and searched for weeks on the internet, not knowing if we wanted a hotel or a house, not knowing which part of Austria we wanted to be in, nothing. We were happy with our choice before we arrived, but once we got there- WOW. We fell into holiday mode right away, normally it takes a couple of days to finally relax (and the fourteen hour drive, full or traffic, did not help either!).

I'm just adding a few photos at a time. Here are some from our first day, when we decided to go outside sledding. We met the cat (Amadeus) and the kids had a lot of fun playing with him.

Football Ole!

We took the kids to their first professional soccer game. They've been to hockey games, but never soccer (in Germany, go figure). Our local team worked its way from the third league to the second league last season. So we went to go see them on a Sunday afternoon with some friends. At the end of the game (we won), our team was in the top two of the table. At the end of each season, the top two teams from each league move into the league above and the bottom two fall to the league below. Needless to say, the crowd was pretty excited.

ps- it was COLD too. Note Nils in his hooligan gear. If an adult came dressed like that, the stadium staff would probably not let him in!