Christmastime in Basel

Tim, Luke, and Tyler went to Basel yesterday afternoon to see Avatar in 3-D. Great movie! They were blown away!
I meanwhile, walked around the city and took pictures in the rain while they were in the theater. One last chance to see the festive lights before they all come down until next Christmas!


The Basel Doll Museum which was decorated beautifully inside and out!



Outside of Doll Museum



The Cartier store was covered with real pine boughs on the outside!




Roasted chestnuts - we buy these every year! Delicious!


Marktplatz

Night Walk

A stroll through our town at night-time.It is especially picturesque during the Christmas season with the streetlights and a real evergreen tree placed outside of each of the shops. Altogether, there were approximately 100 trees placed throughout our town this Christmas!

As a symbol of good luck, depictions of chimney sweeps as well as pigs or dice are a popular New Years gift in Germany. Our local bakery makes these out of marzipan. You can see them displayed in these two pictures.

Winter Walk

Winter is here but no snow at the moment. We will no doubt get some in January. We rarely have a white Christmas, though we did have some beautiful snow in mid December.
Meanwhile, it is still beautiful in the Black Forest of southern Germany. It doesn't matter what time of year it is!
These pictures were taken while on a walk yesterday afternoon.

Family time

Tonight we spent a very enjoyable evening with my niece and her family and Tim's nephew and his family, all who serve in some capacity at BFA.

Tony and Travis made two different homemade soups and Tim baked bread for our supper. Very tasty!





A rousing game of Ticket to Ride.

Two Tylers


Jonathan is eager to play, at least with the game pieces!

Christmas and Family

Yet another Christmas Eve has come and gone in our home. It has been a good evening.
Even KD got wrapped up in Christmas paper!





This is what the weather is like today - no snow but lots and lots of rain (picture was taken from our house). Oh well! I can't remember the last time we had a white Christmas here!

Our real Christmas tree is quite dead actually and is so dry that it was not a good idea to place any presents under it! That's what happens when you put it up at the end of November!

Numerous attempts at taking our annual family Christmas photo!



My three handsome men!



One of our Christmas Eve traditions - pizza fondue!