Christmas in Lenox.

After spending those short few days with Tina's family, we headed down to the states to spend the immediate post-Christmas time with family in Lenox.

Thursday night we had the family over for a nice Christmas dinner, and from what I can tell everyone enjoyed it....

Sitting down for dinner

It was good, as much as Tina was the main one itching to get back home and see everyone, it really is nice to get together with the whole family and talk to everyone again and catch up. Again, my mom attributes this all to Tina, as in the past there were long stretches where several years would go by without me getting home.

More stories about China and what the culture is really like were told, as much as I normally repeat stories even these stories did seem a bit repetitive to me, as now it's been the third time we are telling the same thing, albeit to a new group. At least we only have to tell them once or twice more in Chicago, but it is nice to know that everyone is that interested and enjoys listening to them...

After dinner Tina jump up and, fresh from her family, proceeded to organize everyone around so that she could get all of the required holiday family photos.

The Wichmann men

Unfortunately, the room was dark and without the flash most of the photos that Tina took came out either too dark or blurry. Hopefully everyone else managed to get good pictures and we can get copies of those files the next time that we come home.

Excellent food, and good conversation with family, although short it was a great time.

Christmas Eve/Day

Sorry for the delay in keeping up with the blog, but it's been a little hectic since we arrived home for the holidays.

Since it will be a months or longer before we see each other, it was nice that we were able to spend some time together.

We had the traditional Schmidt family, where a great Christmas Eve dinner was held followed by singing, picture taking, and gift exchanges. Christel worked hard over the past days putting the dinner together, to have it all digested in about 45 minutes. As for our singing, well let's just say that the Von Trapp family we aren't.

Christmas day,my brother and his wife, put on a very tasty meal and by request made my favorite food, kazespaetzel. It' s a southern German dish my mother used to make and I put my request in about 2 months ago. Of course he had little elves to help him. Thanks, Brenda, Willy, Karen and Jennifer and yes, the rest of it, followed me from Brantford, to Boston, to Chicago and hoping it will survive the China flight.

As always when visiting family and friends it goes by quickly, but the great memories will keep me going until we see each other again.

Merry Christmas

So far our Chinese gifts have gone over well....

Fun at Schmidt's

Ah, Christmas. It's good to be home for the holidays to visit with family. We arrived on late on Saturday and had a nice family dinner where Christel prepared some good German food that we haven't had in a long time.

Yesterday, Brenda and Willy hosted dinner at their place and fondue was on the menu. Since some of the family members will not be visiting us in China it was nice to spend some time together with everyone and catch up with some of their stories.

We will be having our traditional Christmas dinner and enjoying our time with family.

Mark and I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Barb's Christmas Party.

Ah, so finally it is beginning to feel like the holidays.

Last night Barb had her yearly holiday party, and nothing quite makes you feel like it's close to Christmas like hanging out at Barb's place with all of their friends. This marks my third year in coming up to this party, and finally they realized that maybe, just maybe, it was time to open up the invitee list. Barb's party, so far as I can tell, has pretty much always been a girls night out type of pre-holiday get together, and for the last two years I was the odd man at the party, and thus treated like that odd sideshow circus attraction that people look at but don't really want to get to close to...

Last night, finally, there was some relief in that I wasn't the lone man at the party. Since I had broken the all women barrier a few years ago, Bridget was allowed to bring her husband Mario to the party. It's nice to see these things opening up to all, and it was a great night of fun which centered mainly on Tina telling China stories and showing off her new language knowledge.

And, as another note, our luggage decided to show up too. I waited all day, mostly watching Discovery and the History channel which I didn't realize I missed that much, and around 15:00 I received a call asking for confirmation on the address to deliver our bags to. Only problem was they only had one bag to deliver. "Where's the other bag" I asked only to hear "We just deliver, we're not the airline, I can't answer your questions..." Yep, that's fun.

So, wait I did and around 18:00 another call came in, this time to tell us that our bag would be delivered before 23:00. Great, so the window of noon to six had now moved to six to eleven, and they still only had one bag. Tina made a few calls to the airlines and somehow our second bag was found. Our bags were delivered mid-party at 20:00 and 21:30.

All is well in our world again.