We are soaking up the holiday season around here and attempting to slow down in the midst of the bustle. This week has been far from slow and I am feeling the effects. There have certainly been moments of calm and lots of memory making moments, but also tough times thrown in.

We decorated the Christmas tree on Saturday and curled up Sat night for a homemade pizza/family movie night.  We watched The Polar Express.  It was a big hit! Seth and I saw it in 3D 8 yrs ago when we started dating. 3D would have been way too much for the boys but the regular version was great!

On Sunday night we spent the evening worshiping with our friends Tim and Susan and their children at Floris United Methodist Church. We made an advent log with candles to light each week. Seth and I have always wanted to do advent activities as a family but somehow it typically gets lost in the shuffle. This year we are trying to do a family devotional in the evenings at dinner time. The boys are enjoying lighting the candle and listening to the story.

On Monday we  met up with Owen’s new friend from Sunday school. A few weeks ago the SS teacher reported that Owen was attracted to JT and spent lots of time interacting with him. JT has cerebral palsy so it takes a little bit longer to say what he wants to say but Owen doesn’t mind a bit. He waits JT out until he gets the answer he wants. And if he thinks JT isn’t listening he just gets in close until his buddy gives him a big smile and responds. Owen loves interacting with him and they have become great buddies. We met he and his mom and siblings at Frying Pan park for the boys to have a play date.   Many of my hours each day are spent disciplining and getting after Owen for not being gentle and kind. This play date kind of rocked my world and gave me a glimpse into this sensitive, gentle side of Owen.

And today was the big cast cut off day, for the big red cast that is!   Jackson was delighted until he learned he can’t do recess or sports until the end of Jan!  It will be an interesting 6 weeks of continued carefulness. Testing us all.  Pray for patience!!  I realized I haven’t even written yet about the second break but to be honest I am so not enjoying this part of life write now so I may just avoid the whole topic a while longer.  I never knew what the impact would be of Jackson being so limited in activity. But back to the good stuff…

his arm is so scrawny and stinky!  My mom wanted me to use the word “scrawny” again so I could spell is correctly this time. He’s bending his wrist funny in the above picture…I promise he doesn’t still have a bent arm.  It is sore and he is not quite sure how to use it again but I am guessing a few days from now he will forget and be using it normally.

I was going to title this post “our week in pics” but I was a bit shocked to discover it’s only Wed and I have spared you lots of our week!!  Tomorrow is St. Nicholas day and I am thinking about making the little bread boys like we did with Daniela last year!  I will try to hop back on and share some pictures if we get around to baking!

Last week my friend Daniela invited us to come to her home to bake Grittibanz in honor of St. Nicholas day. These are breads that you shape into boys and girls. They are traditionally made around the time that people are celebrating St. Nicholas day on December 6th.  Daniela patiently showed Jackson (and the rest of us) how to form his bread and he was thrilled with how they turned out.  It was a fun afternoon together with friends….oh yea, and the bread and hot chocolate were divine!!

Another St. Nicholas tradition is for the kids to put their boots out and when St. Nicholas passes by he puts oranges and peanuts in their boots. this may be a tradition we start next year along with the Grittibanz! Here in Switzerland they have a tradition of going out looking for St. Nick. They often take lanterns into the woods and look for him there at night. I am convinced Jackson would not have slept until at least next Dec 6th had we taken part in the woods hunt, so we passed!  That sounded a wee bit scary for us!

For those of you that want to try to make some Grittibanz here is the recipe Daniela used. It is actually the same you could use for Zopf bread. It is so soft and delicious!! After we made our little people we used the extra dough for Daniela to show us how to braid the Zopf loaves.

Bread Recipe for Zopf (as well as Grittibanz)

500g flour (4 1/2 cups)
1 tsp. salt
1 big spoon sugar
1 package of dried yeast. 7g. how much is that? maybe 1 tsp.
75g butter (1/3 cup)
300ml milk (1 1/4 cups)

mix all the dry ingredients. melt the butter, add the milk and warm it (not too hot, or it kills the yeast bacteria). mix it with the rest, pouring it in the middle and stirring, then kneading (the longer the better) until it is nice and smooth and shows bubbles if you cut it with a knife.

let rest for 1 hour or so in room temperature or warmer  (should raise to double size).

form the people. Take ball of dough and elongate it. Cut a slit in the bottom to make legs. Cut a slit on each side to form arms, cut out triangles above the arm to make the remaining dough into head.
mix an egg with some milk and brush it over the dough people.
bake them 20 min with 200 degrees Celsius.
enjoy!

if you want them (or a braided bread) fresh for breakfast, make the dough in the evening and let it rise through the night in the fridge.

Thanks, Daniela for teaching us something new and “Swissy” to take back with us!

Seth turned the BIG 30 on Friday! We headed out of town to the finca with some friends for the weekend and celebrated there! We didn’t take many pictures of the birthday festivities but have a few.

Jackson and I are so thankful for Seth! He is such a loving father and husband! He is the most wonderful friend and I really cannot imagine living life without him!  My friends keep warning me that turning 30 can bring on an early mid-life crisis. So far Seth is his normal cool, calm and collected self! Maybe just a little bit sassier than he was a few years ago!

We celebrated Seth’s birthday a little early (since we were going to be out of town) last week by going to dinner at an Argentinian Steak house

We had a wonderful dinner with grilled beef tenderloin, etc and our friends Nicholas and Kima brought desserts from a wonderful bakery!

Jackson had a great time at the finca this time! He did last time too but was old enough now to really enjoy it!

snacking on the porch, EARLY in the morning!

a little grumpy on our hike

Ben and Katie, our fellow travelers

All geared up!

Valentine’s cookies!

Reading on the way home!

I seem to be catching up from early December. This cannot be unblogged because it was an exciting moment in the Kolb household.  The second weekend in December our friends Nick and Kima along with their cute kids Ben and Erin made there way to Bern for a fun time of visiting and of course eating. Nick and Kima live in Zug which is about an hour and a half from us (I previously posted pics of when they came back in August).

Kima offered to bring dessert for our meal. Nicholas had been traveling all week in Bogota and was arriving the night before coming to visit. Never once did I even consider our dessert may be from Bogota. When people ask what we miss from Bogota it is normally our friends and some of the treats like Rausch cookies and Myriam Camhi triple chocolate cheesecake. Nick and Kima came with a bag of surprises that contained, you guessed it, Rausch cookies and Myriam cheesecake!   They were amazing! We all sat a little speechless as we ate every crumb of cheesecake, including scraping the sides of the container! Thanks for the fun treats Nick and Kima! Brought back fun memories of Friday night take away and Wii competitions!