In early December I was invited to go on a girl’s getaway to celebrate my dear friend Leigh’s 30th! She had invited a group of her friends from Germany and asked if I would come along. I was honored! We headed out on Friday afternoon and Seth graciously dove in as SuperDad and kept the boys until Sunday afternoon when he and the boys joined us! So I got to have Friday night, Saturday and most of Sunday just with the girls. We ate and chatted and ate some more, shopped a little at the Interlaken Christmas market, drank hot wine, ate some more! Each of us took on a meal and it was really fun because everyone got really into their meals. We ate like queens all weekend and I am confident my pants were tighter when we left the chalet. It was such a fun time of celebrating Leigh and getting to know her sweet friends!

I missed the memo about wearing skinny jeans and tall boots. I have since gotten with the program and got some skinny jeans to go with my boots! Sheesh, someone should have told me sooner!

Katy Jo unexpectedly got to tag along for the girls weekend and was such a pleasure! She was a great sleeper and such a sweetie!

this was the view of the mountain directly in from of our chalet. Stunning!

Bo, Leigh and Katy Jo.  We are enjoying every chance we can to hang out while we live so close!

The boys and Seth came up on Sunday night to join in on the fun. We stayed in the chalet until Tues morning when we headed back to Bern. Unfortunately, we had no idea that Owen had a double ear infection. He didn’t sleep more than 20 mins at a time the first night and the second he was up screaming ALL night! Despite the ear infection and sleepless nights we enjoyed being on our first getaway as a family of 4. We sat by the fire, sipped hot chocolate and champagne and enjoyed each others company. We hope to go back someday when everyone is healthy!

carpenters workbench in a little shop we went in

Well, I think I always anticipate us doing something super exciting on New Year’s Eve. To be honest I don’t think we have even been up to kiss at midnight in quite a few yrs. Last yr I was probably up at midnight but it was to feed a little Owen baby and it was for sure not for fireworks and champagne!

This year we spent the morning sledding and now have plans for a very mellow evening of fondue, molten lava chocolate cake and some champagne (which may or may not be consumed at midnight). It has been a fun day. Seth’s parents are in town so that makes it feel more like a holiday. Seth lit a party popper that was a canister full of party blowers and streamers and Jackson shrieked “Happy New Year” as it exploded. I made Jackson an ice cream snowball (vanilla ice cream rolled in coconut) and put a sparkler in the top. That my friends, is the extent of our New Year’s fun. And these days it feels like more than enough.

fondue! they may or may not have mouthfuls!

2010 has been a very good year in the Kolb house. We always have our fair share of drama related to our frequent moves and transitions but overall this has been the smoothest move in many ways and our little family is growing up! I love babies but I am loving even more watching the boys as they learn and grow! I am looking forward to this coming year and all that it will bring with a 3 1/2 to be 4 yr old and a 1 yr old heading into walking, talking and wrestling his big brother. I am excited to enjoy another yr of marriage to Seth and to grow together as a couple and as parents.  I have hopes that 4 yrs old will be kinder to Jackson than 3 and that Seth and I will gain wisdom as we continue to try to crack this code in parenting.

This past yr has been filled with fun cooking and baking projects and some DIY crafty things. I hope to keep that up. But I did get an email forwarded from Seth about enrolling in the Foreign Services long-distance German program. Blek. That may or may not be on the yr’s agenda. We are spoiled in Bern because nearly everyone speaks English and in Bern most don’t speak German they speak Swiss German so no matter how many hours I spend on High German, really it’s all about the Swiss German.  I know many of you think “oh how amazing it is that you all can learn so many languages”. I guarantee my brain is as old and as limited as yours and I have 2 kids to keep alive and well so it just doesn’t seem as glamorous as some may think. We’ll see.

First up on the agenda for 2011 is a getaway with Seth. Seth and I are heading to Paris to celebrate our 5 yr anniversary. I have never been to Paris. It will be cold I am sure and I don’t know how much touristy stuff we will be doing. We will mostly be sleeping in, eating yummy food and enjoying the fact that we can finish sentences without being interrupted by our little ones.

“wait, you didn’t hear about how we bought two trees this yr?”

Let me tell you the story because I have certainly told everyone else already.

You see we got really excited about Christmas so the weekend after Thanksgiving we went out and bought our tree. It was just like people told us it would be here. Beautiful but a little scraggly on the top. We decorated it and made it look so pretty. Daddy watered it but then mommy left town on a girls trip. For some reason the tree stopped drinking water. Mommy was so sad to come home and find it almost dead. It was 3 weeks before Christmas and the tree was dead. It wasn’t pretty and that was sad but the reason we had to throw it out was that our special ornaments started to fall off the tree. Crazy, huh? We have tile floors so they were breaking. Oh my!

So, mommy decided to go ahead and put up an artificial tree but daddy decided that he really liked the real tree and that it may be our only other Swiss tree (since we may get to go home for Christmas next year!!!). That next Sat mommy and daddy loaded us up and drove us up the mountain to find the tree farmer (no more hardware store trees for us). He had cut beautiful trees just the day before. We picked the best tree in the bunch and loaded it up!

We headed home with our tree and tried to set it up just right. The trunk looked a little funny because the farmer shaved off the outside of the trunk at the bottom. I don’t think he knew that that meant it couldn’t soak up any water. Oh my! So our pretty tree was fresh and green for about a week before it started getting dry! It hung on until Christmas but mommy kept telling people not to get too close because all of the needles were falling off.

Now I know you may be thinking that my mommy and daddy are a bit crazy. I sometimes think that. But I can tell you that our tree was really pretty and we enjoyed it so much! We wish all of you could have been here to enjoy it too.(oh and our friends bought a tree at the farm on the same day and their’s died too! so it  wasn’t daddy’s watering technique)

Currently both dead trees are in our atrium collecting snow until the especially assigned tree trash day!

Lots of these pictures made it to Facebook but I realize some of our relatives don’t use facebook. We have been enjoying the snow so much. We have a little hill behind our house so on the weekends when we have a couple of free hours we have been gearing the boys up to sled. Owen actually enjoys it as much as Jackson and gets pretty annoyed when he has to wait his turn!

Every good sledding morning is followed by hot chocolate. Not too hot and with marshmallows please, according to Jackson.