December 14-15

On December 14, we headed to church

Oh I just adore our girls

Sunday afternoon, Dec. 14 Opa Hans & Oma Erika came by to visit

Oma Erika and Carolina Grace had a ball together

The girls so enjoyed their visit to our home

Oma Erika is great with babies

Ella Rose loves to entertain Oma Erika and Opa Hans

Such a wide open little girl with a big personality to boot

Such a little ham

Having dessert and coffee

It has been such a blessing to know The Schneider's (our former landlords) while we've been in Germany

We always have such a great time with Erika and Hans

Erika and Hans speak NO ENGLISH, but it has been great for Ian and I to learn more German, and Ella Rose can actually say Tschuss (goodbye in German) and Danke (Thank you).

Ian, the girls, and I finished the evening off with going to the German/American Christmas concert at our church which was fabulous! It was a very busy day to say the least and we were thankful the girls took about a 3 hour nap that afternoon.

When we got home, we put the girls to bed, and we put up our small little Christmas tree. The first year we were in Germany (2005) & our first Christmas together as a married couple, our stuff had not even arrived in time for Christmas so Ian bought a small Christmas tree with the roots still intact, and we ended up planting it in Etschberg (where Hans & Erika were our landlords).

Well the 2nd and 3rd Christmas' we were here, Ian wanted to buy these HUGE Christmas trees that took up literally half of the family room. So this year we decided to get a small Christmas tree since we have such little space in our base house as well as a toddler who we knew would have a tough time not climbing UP the tree and bringing the whole thing down. To top it off we had to place the tree in Ella Rose's play area since there was no space anywhere else.

The morning of December 15, Ella Rose came down and saw the Christmas tree for the 1st time...she was doing a little dance here!

We placed ornaments on the tree that were not breakable so Ella Rose could actually enjoy them. There will be many years in the future where we can have a BIG tree again with all the breakable, glass ornaments, but we wanted this to be a Christmas where we weren't constantly saying "no touch." Hee hee!

The only rule: You can touch but you just can't take the ornaments off the tree...within a couple of days she was doing pretty well with this rule...we're working on the OBEY word so we constantly walk around and say HOORAY FOR OBEY! (thank you Mimi)

We placed the Nativity set we bought from The Elim Mission Center from Poland on the chair. All the pieces are made of cloth and are kid friendly so Ella Rose thoroughly enjoyed playing with all the pieces. She has a Fisher Price Nativity Set too that plays "Away In A Manger", and I showed her how to rock Baby Jesus as we sang. Watching her walk around rocking Baby Jesus in her arms was absolutely precious.