New Year's Day

New Year's Day was a Sunday this year.  We have church in the morning this year (we share the building with a German congregation and each year we take turns meeting in the morning or afternoon) so after we got home from church, we had the rest of the day to spend as a family.  The boys wanted to play Blokus -- a new game we received during the holidays.  Predictably, Sara wanted to play too.  So rather than fighting with her about the pieces, I let the boys take turns playing online.  Like Othello, Blokus is easy to learn but difficult to master.  Oscar went first and then Calvin had a turn.  Both boys finished in third place.

Christmas Day 2011

Tina let the boys pick their own breakfast for Christmas morning.  They chose a special holiday version of Cap'n Crunch.  Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like sweetened corn and oat cereal.

Christmas Eve 2011

Some families we know open presents on Christmas Eve but we make our children wait until Christmas Day.  We spent Christmas Eve getting ready for Christmas day.

White Wings basketball

The wife of one of my coworkers is a cheerleader for the Hanau White Wings (a professional basketball team based out of a medium-sized town about 15 miles east of Frankfurt).  Tiffany (the cheerleader) noticed that two of the players on the basketball team were Americans and in talking with them and their wives, the topic came up that both of them (Chris Miles and Logan Magnusson) had played college basketball together at BYU.  Jamie (the coworker) mentioned this to me at work since he thought I might be interested in seeing them play (I was).

Christmas decorations, Narula style

Here are some of the ornaments on our Christmas tree:

Army Mail

When we get mail from the United States, it is delivered to our post office box at the Army Post Office (APO) on the local military base.  As a benefit to citizens living overseas on military orders, the cost of mailing things to overseas locations is subsidized (the cost to the sender is the same as mailing the item to New York City).  This means APO mail is a lot cheaper than other international shipping services (FedEx, UPS, and others).  We get a fair amount of mail via the APO and are grateful to have this convenience while living in Germany.

Brussels, Belgium

Last week a coworker and I drove to Belgium for some meetings at NATO in Brussels and at SHAPE in Mons.  We spent the night in Brussels at a hotel that was a five minute walk from Grand Place.

Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Bauer

The local Army base offers German lessons for Americans that want to improve their German language skills.  I started taking classes with Frau Bauer in early 2010.  I took four of her classes and was looking forward to a fifth this fall.  Tina had also taken two of her classes and was signed up for a third.  Her classes were really good for me and I learned a lot.  I always felt like I got more out of the classes than I paid for.

Soccer, Fall 2011

The boys played soccer again this fall.  The league is sponsored by the local army base with volunteer coaches.  Each team gets to choose its own team name.  Oscar's team was "The Dragons" and Calvin's team was "The Little Green Monsters".  Calvin's coach was somebody we know from church.

Halloween 2011

Tina made costumes for Calvin and Sara (Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse).  Oscar's costume (Harry Potter) was purchased.