Christmas Unwrapped

We head back to school and work tomorrow after a long, wonderful Christmas break. We have shared nearly three weeks of fun together. We've highlighted a couple of the big things (Christmas Markets, Sledding, Christmas, and New Years Eve) in separate posts, but I wanted to share a final round up of the ordinary that we got to participate in as those are often my favorite memories.

Advent started quite nicely this year on December 1st so it was easy for me to track our weeks. We celebrated with our Advent calendars and nightly Bible story reading. Can I tell you how much easier it is to get everyone out of bed when you ask them if they've checked the Advent box yet?

Nothing like chocolate at 7:20am!

We also got into our baking groove this season with Gingerbread, Cake Pops and Banana Muffins.

My Chief Sprinkle Officer may have performed some quality control while I wasn't watching

We took some time to go ice skating with friends who also stayed in town over the break. The city of Vaduz turns their town square into an outdoor ice skating rink every Christmas season complete with a snack bar and fun music & lights to skate to.

The Moms definitely had more fun than the kids, the kids just don't know it

The girls kept asking if we could have a slumber party one night. I said no several times before I finally got brave enough to ask what a slumber party was. Turns out they just wanted to sleep on the floor in the living room. So I gave in. We set up a "bed" and watched a movie complete with popcorn. Then we turned out the lights and said good night. Mom & Dad elected for their bed rather than joining on the floor...because we're old.

How I found them the next morning. I'm pretty sure its staged as they were giggling like crazy.

A favorite series of events for me was our Family Reindeer Games. Inspired by Instagram, I made up some silly things we could do as a family over the course of a couple of days while the weather wasn't letting us outside much.

Hot Santa was hot potato with a Santa stuffie which I apparently took no photos of. Charlotte was the big winner though.

In the Bow Roll, we had to collect the bows by rolling up the TP roll without knocking off the gingerbread man from the end. We timed the attempts and I won. By a landslide. Nobody else would take the slow and steady method to keep the gingerbread man on the paper so they all had to keep starting again.

Here's where it got interesting. Hungry, Hungry Reindeer is our life-sized version of Hungry, Hungry Hippos and was equally as spirited a competition. We split into teams and played best two out of three. Charlotte & I were the overall winners, though it was quite the spirited match.

The final round of the games was the Collect the Snow challenge where we all donned our reindeer hooves and tried to pick up as much snow (marshmallows) as we could. The large ones were worth one point, the small 5 points. Adam was the winner. I would like to point out that nobody was throwing marshmallows at him while he was trying to compete. However, he did not have the advantage of the timekeeper forgetting to start the timer so I guess we'll call them offsetting penalties and accept the results.

Overall, I took the points total of the Family Reindeer Games. We enjoyed this more than I expected. I can see this becoming a tradition in our family. Or at least something my teenage kids roll their eyes at when I tell them about.

I mentioned the weather a minute ago. And boy was it strange. For four full days we had freezing fog. The temperature never got above 28* and the fog was so thick it literally froze to any surface it was near. I have never experienced anything like it. When it did finally start to clear, it reveled the most beautiful crystalized scene. I'm pretty sure I've now lived through Frozen 3.

We took the opportunity to head up the mountain some and see the world above the fog. It was so neat to see the valley below and be above the clouds (but standing on the ground!).

We took a hike through the Lichterweg one evening (translation: Light Way). It was a 2 mile trail through the forest with little light exhibits throughout. It was a beautiful walk in the fresh air (I do mean FRESH - it was about 25* the night we went!) and well worth all the bundling up to get to explore.

One final event to celebrate during our break was Adam's birthday. He hasn't gotten to celebrate a birthday in Liechtenstein yet as we've been in the UK and Austria for his last two so we're glad we got to really celebrate him this year.

I made his favorite cake. I'd like to point out that 3 of the 7 ingredients were imported from the US so there was a lot of advanced planning to make this for him.

We had tacos for dinner - also requires a lot of planning because you have to go to 3 different grocery stores to get all the ingredients for a taco dinner (one sells tortillas, one sells Spanish rice, one sells refried beans). Oh, and don't get me started on how hard it was to find tequila for margaritas!

I only point out all this advanced planning I did because I forgot one minor thing...candles for his cake. So, do some math 37 (from two little girls' previous birthdays) + 7 tea lights = 44! Happy Birthday to our favorite guy! Sorry about the hat, the girls really wanted to have a party.

At dinner on our last night of the break, we talked about all the things we did over the two weeks. We all agreed it was a great time together as a family. I'm grateful we got to slow down and enjoy it together. Even if I was slightly ready to get everyone back on their normal schedules:

'Twas the night before the first day of school...

New Years Celebrations

With it being both our first and last New Year's in Liechtenstein (we've traveled the last two years over the New Year), we decided we needed to do a proper Swiss NYE. This included researching and trying to figure out the craziest of Swiss traditions, eating some fondue and watching all the fireworks.

Lets start with Silvesterchlausen. I'm not entirely sure what it stands for -- something to the effect of New Years Eve Lice. But it's in a Swiss-German dialect and so really, really not sure. All of this goes down in the Appenzell canton about 45 minutes from us. The Silvesterchläuse roam the streets. There are three types, known as «schöne Chläus», «wüeschti Chläus» und «Naturchläus». The beautiful «schöne Chläus» wear ornamental headgear depicting scenes from rural life, lovingly made by hand over hundreds of hours. The wild «wüeschti Chläus» and natural «Naturchläus» boast artful, wildly decorated hats, bonnets and masks. The activities start in the early morning hours with the lice walking from door to door singing and yodeling to wish everyone a Happy New Year. They stay out until midnight, visiting the inns in the vicinity during the evening.

The actual origin of the custom is unknown. Some accounts I read attribute it to an ancient fertility cult, some said it was part of the carnival customs, a few referred back to St Nicholas. A group of Chläus is called a «Schüppel». A Schüppel has two «Rolli» and a group of «Schelli». The Schelli have two large bells (front and back), while the Rolli wear suspender-like leather frames with round roller bells on them. They parade around town - kind of together, kind of not - in a random pattern (the town website even explicitly says they will not announce a parade route, you just have to find them). They then line up in a circle in front of their chose house, start ringing and jingling then sing three or four songs and jingle some more. The house residents reward the Schüppel with food (usually bread) and drink (usually beer). At the end, they wish everyone a Happy New Year and head off to the next house or business.

As we drove into the area, here's what we saw:

We knew we were on to something. The girls and I hopped out of the car and Adam left in search of parking. Next thing I knew they'd all joined up in the parking lot of the local gas station and started jingling and singing.

We caught up with Adam who had found some parking and then spent the better part of the next two hours wandering around this little town that makes Lometa, TX look like a metropolis listening for bells and singing.

I think we managed to find all three groups and at least 1/5th of the time knew what was going on so I called it a success.

We headed back home and got ready for our family NYE celebration. We had the most Swiss dinner we could come up with: fondue.

The tradition of kissing the person on your left when you lose something in the fondue pot is strong in our house. Let's just say Adam ended up with more than a peck or two from a certain 7-year-old.

We convinced the girls at about 8:30 that it was midnight. Considering they usually go to bed at 7:30 this felt like it was super late for them, plus some of the neighbors were already shooting off fireworks so we had some plausibility to the story. We lit our NYE sparklers (in banana muffins -- we do not need any more cake over here!) and sang Auld Lang Syne.

We got the girls to bed then Adam & I watched some of the College Football Bowl Games - the day games in the US were just getting going. We made it to midnight and everywhere around us lit up. It was this loud and bright for about 45 minutes into the new year.

The following morning we woke up to the most beautiful sight. What a way to start the year.