wir haben geschafft!

Or to put in into English - we did it!

Survived Christmas for another year that is!

It's the 27th December, and we have Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing day well and truly behind us! Just New Year's Eve left then we can close the door on 2009 and the 'noughties'.

And what have I/we achieved while I've been a blog free zone...let me think (see if my brain still functions after all that fizz, my fingers have certainly forgotten where all the keys are)

Christmas Eve;
waffles and hot chocolate in Lulu's, collected my tombola prizes (a crown T-light, a mini sewing machine (!) and a voucher for a meal and a drink - not a bad haul) then we collected the turkey and the last few things from the supermarket, I always forget something & it was surprising how calm it was in Rewe at 12:00, bearing in mind the Germans like to food shop daily (or so it seems) and the shops were about to be closed for 3.5 days (that's half a week, how would they cope? Discovered how yesterday, they were all in the many eiscafes & cafes eating cake and waffles)
Iced the Christmas cake - looking awesome I think you'll agree, tastes pretty damn fine too, especially when eaten with a slice of Wensleydale cheese (thanks to Ian and Rebecca's mom for smuggling the Wensleydale into the country - you can buy Wensleydale here, but not the pure, unadulterated variety, it has to have mango & ginger or cranberries in it before the Germans will eat it, which is fine, but not with cake!)
Then we had Jasmine's Krippenschpiel. We bunch of atheists have never done church on a Christmas Eve here - it was heaving, standing room only (and some people couldn't seem to get into the church to stand (or maybe they just wanted the excuse to stand outside and have a sneaky fag?) The Krippenschpiel went well, 3 microphones being passed around between 8 year olds, like some bizarre Xmas relay race, I felt that the angels looked like ABBA wannabes and Jas remembered her lines, despite looking severely bored...

Christmas Day:
Children were very civilized and woke us at 7am (having probably spent the previous hour downstairs scoping out the present situation) and by 8 it was all over bar the shouting leaving me to get on with the turkey and drinking Bucks Fizz. Jas loved the iPod (now seems to have earphones permanently attached to her head) but hasn't stopped being upset about not getting 'Biscuit' a remote control dog - there are several reasons she didn't get said toy
1. we have a real live dog
2. she didn't write a letter to Santa ('because he'll know what I want')
3. he (Biscuit) is horribly expensive
Ben seems to be pleased with the battle tanks and the remote control helicopter that Si had a go with when Ben wasn't looking and crash landed it breaking a leg off it...

Boxing Day:
I woke up and went for a run, hadn't been for a week due to the snow and ice, it felt good to be out there, it was very quiet too apart from a group of crazy Germans shooting ducks along the river and trying to get their retriever style dogs to 'go fetch' the ducks floating on their backs with their feet in the air (I say retriever style because the dogs were black and so clearly not the classic retriever, but they were retriever shape & were retrieving - which is more than our Golden Retriever does)
After lunch I dragged the children and Simon out for a walk (I thought they should maybe get some fresh air) and we seemed to meet the rest of Kettwig promenading along the river, and those that weren't walking were stopped in the 2 cafes at the bottom of the hill, refueling.

And that was Christmas 2009. There's still plenty of turkey to be eaten and lots of Christmas cake too, but if we're bored with those 2 options the shops are all open again tomorrow!