Dec. 21st and 22nd

As part of our gift from St. Nicholas, Johannes and I went with his parents to a Christmas concert (Weihnachts Konzerte) at the St. Peter und Paul church in Ilbenstadt on Sunday. The concert was held in a beautiful yet simple old church, something you'd imagine seeing on the catholic channel, and after we came out the church bells were ringing like mad. We then stopped by Fritz and Simone's for some dinner and watch the grandparents attempt to hold Melissa without making her cry :)

Today, Monday, was a busy day. We went with Margarete to get her hair cut and the family hair dresser was so excited to see Johannes that he offered to cut his hair as well, not to mention he thought he needed the cut. Come to find out Johannes has been going to the same guy since he was little and while we were there he told us a story about when Johannes was 3. Afterward we went to visit Johannes' great aunt Gietel (Margarete's aunt) who lives in that town, the same place where Margarete grew up. We spent the afternoon at her home visiting with her and being spoiled with goodies and campaign! Since she lived in Texas at one point she knows a little bit of English and was able to talk to me a tad bit. In the evening we spent it visiting with another family relative, Johannes' aunt Bina (Matthias' sister) who lives in the house Matthias grew up in. We sat in their livingroom visiting around a lit advent wreath including a bowl of Christmas cookies and drinking some hot spiced Christmas wine. Needless to say it was a hard day, ya know sitting around and getting spoiled. But anyone who has ever spent anytime with family knows that a full day of it can be tiring, not to mention a full day of conversations in German that you don't understand!

The next few days also are looking busy. Johannes has a dentist appointment tomorrow and then Wednesday is Christmas and Fritz, Simone and Melissa will be joining us for the evening. Katharina and Robert will be coming up on the 25th and we will also be visiting Oma on the 25th. So if you do not hear anything new in the next few days it is because we are enjoying our Christmas and you should be as well!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

And by the way if there are any Zs where the Ys go, it's because those two keys are switched on the German keyboard and infact there's alot of keys that are different which makes typing a lot slower than it should be. Hence why updates take more than 5 minutes to type.