The Real Christmas

I thought I would write about my Christmas day this year.
It began with waking up at my house in Maur with Heidi. After collecting all the peanut butter balls that I had made with the kids a few days pior, Heidi and I walked to the edge of the lake behind my house to take the boat to the other side. The other side of the lake is Uster which is about 15 minutes from where Heidi lives. Taking the boat across is a much faster route than taking the bus and trains into Zurich and then into Uster. Unfortunately, the boat does not run very often. But anyways, this was the first time I had done this and it was really fun! It's only about a five minute boat ride but the lake was so pretty that morning! It was cold but it was a clear day and it all looked so beautiful. I have a couple of pictures below.
Once we got to Heidi's family's house (they were all away so they said it was ok if we used their house to cook our Christmas meal and celebrate), Amanda arrived shortly after. We set about putting up the few decorations we had and setting out our presents that we got for each other while listening to Christmas music. A few hours later we all put on our Christmas outfits and I had to go to the airport to meet Cody! He was arriving late in the afternoon and since the buses and trains were on holiday time, there weren't as many as usual running as many routes so it took me longer than I would have liked to make it to the airport in Zurich. But he arrived safe and sound, and not a little tired, and the two of us returned to the house. Amanda and Heidi had been putting together our Christmas meal while we were gone. This consisted of schnitzel, green beans, mashed potatoes, and bread and cheese. We also had lots of delicious cookies that Heidi made (called spitzbuben) and my chocolate peanut butter balls. Dinner was great, thanks to Amanda's schnitzel cooking skills.
After dinner, we had some of Heidi's neighbor's kids come over and sing us Christmas carols! This was really cute and fun. The three girls came with their father, who is British, and sang us three or four songs.
We then decided it was present time! The three of us girls decided to get each of the others something small so that we would all have presents to open. They were mostly funny presents and so this was quite entertaining.
After this, we pretty much called it a night. We watched a little bit of German television for awhile and called it a fairly successful Christmas abroad.
I have attached another slide show of the Christmas pictures I took that day! (if you click on it, they will pop up in another page and be larger)