Well, I guess that's it.  2011 is officially over.

For most of us in the Bitner household, 2011 did NOT go out with a bang.  Here is what we were doing for the last minute of 2011:

Brad and Jill were huddled on the couch watching an episode of Amazing Race while sipping fruit tea with honey in an effort to calm our raging sore throats.

Pepper was wrapped in his favorite blanket in the rocking chair, also watching Amazing Race and sipping fruit tea with honey, but only because he actually likes tea.

Adam was slapping his face to stay awake while watching Amazing Race with the rest of us.

Luke was asleep on the living room floor, wrapped from head-to-toe in a blanket so that only one bare foot was showing.

Jessica was at the Brandenburg Gate with friends, surrounded by millions of celebratory Berliners waiting for the killer fireworks show to begin.  She's the only one of us who is at all cool.

So, from the messy, germy, rather lame Bitner home, we wish you all a very Happy New Year!

After a full day of doing nothing but lazing around like a family of slugs, I am happy to report that, to my knowledge, nobody has fought, belittled, or tormented each other all day.

However,  now my house looks like this:

 

I am choosing not to care.

Well, our day in Hamburg didn't turn out anything like we'd planned.  We had plans to visit the Miniature Museum and do a boat tour through the harbor, so after breakfast, we stowed our luggage in the car and set out on foot to start at the museum.  It was kind of cold and windy, so the 20 minute walk to the museum felt pretty long.

When we arrived at the museum, we were told that it was full and there would be a 45 minute to 2 hour wait before we could get in.  We weren't too keen on waiting that long just to go through a crammed museum, so we decided to bag it and just go on the boat tour.  After another 20 minute walk through the cold, we arrived at the boat tour place only to find that they don't do tours in English after November 1.  

By now, we were tired, cold, and hungry.  The only thing we could see to do at this point was a bus tour, but when the bus arrived, it was stuffed with people shoulder to shoulder.  That didn't look too appealing, either, so we decided to wait for the next bus to come, hoping it would be less crowded.  We waited for about 10 minutes for the next bus, but then it became obvious that nobody really wanted to do it, so we bagged that plan, too.

At this point, we weren't loving Hamburg.

We began the long walk back to the car, planning to stop and get something to eat on the way.  We found a cool restaurant on a boat in the harbor, but when we got on the boat, most of it was closed, and there wasn't any place for us to sit.  So, we bagged that, too.  We continued walking, stopping at a couple of decent-looking restaurants, but again there weren't any tables available.  Finally, when we were almost to the car, we found a good restaurant and sat down to a much-needed lunch of yummy food, friendly service, and large Diet Cokes.  Let's just say that Grill&Green Restaurant saved Hamburg for us.

Feeling significantly better, we piled into the car and drove home.  I don't think any of us were sad to see Hamburg in our rear-view mirror.

Today we drove to Bremerhaven to visit the coolest museum, Deutsches Auswanderhaus.  

Bremerhaven is the port town off the North Sea where a bunch of German people sailed from when they left Germany for the New World in the years between about 1800 to 1950.  Deutsches Auswanderhaus is the museum that commemorates what that experience was like and why people left.  

 

It is super interesting, because when you get your ticket, they give you a name of an actual emigrant and a little card that you can swipe throughout the museum to see what your person's actual experience was at that stage of their trip.  The museum takes you through the whole journey, and at the end you can find out what happened to your person once they reached the New World - America in most cases, although Luke's guy ended up in Argentina.  

 

We all got totally attached to our people, and I was particularly sad to learn that my woman died about a year after she finally arrived in Texas in 1856.  Lukie's guy was Jewish, the son of a famous opera director and opera singer.  He left after the Nazis took power in 1936 and his parents could no longer work in Germany.  He was 18 when he arrived in Argentina, but he had to start school in the 6th grade because he didn't speak Spanish.  His dad convinced him to take up an instrument so he could go to a musical conservatory instead, so he picked up the oboe.  He ended up being a pretty famous oboist (is that a word?).

We watched a film at the end where they interviewed German people who had left to start a new life in America.  It was kind of sad, because many of them talked about how Germany is no longer their home and they prefer their life in America.  I was pretty surprised to see that shown in Germany - doesn't it hurt Germany's feelings?

After spending the day at the museum, we drove to Hamburg.  That night, we found a Christmas market and had a lovely evening wandering the streets of Hamburg.

Brad has this whole week off work, so we thought it would be fun to take a road trip.  We piled into the car this afternoon and drove to Bremen.

We arrived at the hotel in time for the kids to watch the weirdest show, Super Brot.  We don't have German TV at our house, so the only time the kids watch this is when we stay in hotels.  It is some strange kids' show about a puppet in the shape of a slice of bread.  Luke calls it the Bread Man Show.  

I totally don't get it.

 My friend Susanne has the awesome Boxing Day tradition of inviting people over on December 26 to just chill.  Everyone comes with their Christmas Day leftovers, and we sit around and eat and chit chat.  It is the perfect way to wind down after Christmas, when we're all a little exhausted from partying the day before, but not quite ready for the Christmas fun to end.

We have had a truly lovely Christmas this year.  I think it is kind of nice to have church on Christmas, especially since it is only for one hour.

After church, our friends the Clarks invited us to join them for what they called Christmas Lunch.  Don't let the "lunch" deceive you, it was a full-blown Christmas feast!  Ham, Turkey, potatoes, two kinds of stuffing (I'm going to be dreaming of the cranberry/apple/mushroom stuffing for some time - yum!), veggies, gravy. . .it was all just so amazingly delicious!  I am sad that I forgot to bring my camera, because everything - the food, the company, the conversation - was just perfect.  We had such a nice time (well, except for poor Pepper.  His cat allergies were acting up pretty bad, so we had to leave earlier than we wanted to.  But even he didn't want to hurry out of there).

When we returned home, it was finally late enough for us to call our families without it being the crack of dawn in their time zone.  I was lucky enough to catch several of my siblings at my parents' house eating Christmas Breakfast (a cholesterol-full culinary delight), and it was great to chat with them.

Here is Brad on the phone with his parents.  After a couple of hours on the phone, we felt better about being so far away from everyone on Christmas.  Someday, someday, we will live close enough to actually be with our families on Christmas.  But for now, we are thankful that we can at least talk to them.

It's Christmas Eve, and that means two things here in the Bitner household:

1.  Bitner Weird Food Buffet

In my house growing up, we ate pretty simple foods.  We were a meat-and-potatoes kind of family.  But, when I married Brad, I was introduced to what I call Bitner Weird Food.  They like lots of dips and savory vegetables and spicy meats.  Since my kids are all Bitners and have inherited the Weird Food gene, this is what we have for Christmas Eve.  It works for me because I don't have to cook a big dinner.  We just set it all out on the table and everybody grazes while we laze around and play games.  It's pretty swell.

and, of course,

2.  Opening the "soft presents"

Back when she only had 3 or 4 grandchildren, my mom started a tradition of making Christmas pajamas for the grandkids to open on Christmas Eve.  Now she has 24 grandchildren, but she still makes jammies for them all to open the night before Christmas.  It is awesome for the kids to open them up and know that somewhere across an ocean, their cousins are all opening up similar packages and wearing similar jams.  It really helps us feel closer to our family on Christmas Eve.

All day long, my kids kept asking me when it would be time to open the "soft presents" because they knew that once those jammies were opened and put on, Christmas had officially begun.

One of our Christmas traditions is that the kids sleep by the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve Eve.  This year, Luke was the only one brave enough to spend the night on the hard floor.  The other three kids opted to sleep in their soft beds.  I would be sad, but I really can't blame them.

When Pepper turned 12 last year, he was SUPER excited to join the Young Men in our ward.  I am pleased to say that after more than a year with them, he is still SUPER excited to be with them.  In the words of my friend from South Africa, the YM are "simply gorgeous"  with Pepper.

Last night, Pep invited the YM to our house to play Xbox and have a little party.  Tonight, he is having a sleepover at the YM president's house with all the boys.  I'm sure he is in heaven.

This is another of our favorite German Christmas traditions: advent calendars.  They have 24 little flaps numbered 1 to 24, and under each flap is a little chocolate piece.  Each morning, the kids find the appropriate day and eat the chocolate with breakfast.

I gotta hand it to the Germans - they sure know how to play up the anticipation to Christmas!

No, this is not the same picture from last night.  If you look closely, you can see that we are watching Elf tonight.

A couple of days ago, my sister posted on Facebook about the old Charlie Brown Christmas special, and it led to several people commenting on their favorites and the memories associated with them.  I realized that my own kids had never even seen some of the oldies-but-goodies, so I downloaded a bunch of Christmas shows for us to watch this week.  So every night after dinner, we have all grabbed our favorite blankets and hunkered down to watch a Christmas show.

This morning, I effectively ruined Christmas vacation by posting these two charts:

Not only did I have the gall to make a daily chore chart, but I also made a computer time sign-up chart.  When Jessica saw these, all she said was, "This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen" before she turned up her nose and walked away.

I guess it is appropriate that we watched the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas tonight after dinner.  Apparently, the Grinch and I have a lot in common.

Tonight, the Reiner family invited us to their home for 4th Advent Sunday.  The Reiners are Comfort People at their finest, and we had a truly lovely evening chatting while we ate mountains of goodies. 

One of the best things about Christmas in Germany is the Christmas markets.  This evening, Brad and I took the boys to the market at Charlottenburg Schloss.  It was cold and crowded, but still magical in an old-fashioned Christmas sort of way.  The market had tons of booths selling food, hot chocolate, hot wine, and lots of hand-made gifts and traditional German Christmas decorations.  There was even a section with kids' carnival rides and a track for the boys to ride Segways.  We were only there for about an hour and a half, but it was long enough to drink hot chocolate, ride some rides, and buy a super cute little ceramic German house.

Please look carefully at this photo.  There are some key elements that I want to point out:

1.  Spongebob is not playing on the TV.

2.  The remote control is not lost.

3.  There are no shoes or dirty socks on the floor.

4.  There are no ketchup bottles, plastic grape containers, Pringles cans, or glasses half full of chocolate milk strewn around.

5.  There are not 8 or 9 blankets making a bed in the middle of the rug.

And, if you listen carefully, you will notice:

1.  There is no Rihanna blasting from iTunes on the computer.

2.  There is no inane computer game music.

3.  The TV volume has not been turned up very high so we can hear Spongebob over everything else.

4.  Nobody is whining that Jessica has been on the computer longer than an hour.

In approximately 3 hours, Christmas vacation will begin.  I am taking this opportunity to savor my last 3 hours of peace for the next 2 1/2 weeks.

This morning was Luke's Winter Concert at his school.

As always, he stole the show.  Just so you know, Luke is a very good hula dancer.

 For the last song, Luke somehow got stuck behind the bigger kids.  But he still kept poking his head up to make sure I was watching.

(For all you People Magazine fans - do you recognize the little girl in the black dress?  Her mom is an Oscar-award-winning actress who is here in Berlin filming a movie.  I don't want to write her name, because then Google might capture it and some sicko would know where this little girl goes to school.)

(another hint:  that is her daddy in the knit hat)

Ever wonder what a Tender Mercy looks like?

In my book, it looks like this:

A couple of weeks ago, the external drive on our computer started clicking when we turned it on.  It worked fine; it just made a clicking sound when it first powered up.  Because that is where I store ALL my photos, I thought it might be a good idea to back them up, just in case.  As luck would have it, I had some writable DVD's handy, so I took an hour or so and backed up ALL my photos - since 2004.

Well, this week the external drive is kaput.  It won't turn on, and my computer won't recognize that it is even hooked up.  If I hadn't backed-up my photos, I would be suicidal right now.  Seriously.  I'm not the world's greatest photographer, but I love to take pictures, especially of my kids.  If I had lost all of those photos, I promise I would be a blithering puddle on the floor.  

But, instead, I am looking smugly at my photo DVD back-ups.

Tender Mercy.

Tonight in the bathtub, Luke thought he was being very clever when he put bubbles all over his face and started "Ho Ho Ho"-ing like Santa Claus.

What he didn't realize was that back in 2004, I had the same idea with his three older siblings.

This is the photo we sent out with our Christmas letter that year.  I'm pretty sure it is my favorite Christmas photo ever.

Tonight for FHE, we put together the gingerbread house kit I bought last week.  

I picked the kit up at the grocery store for 5€, and it was perfect.  It took us about a half hour to put together, nobody cared if it was particularly cute or not, and when it was done, we all tore it apart and ate it.  It was just our speed - we will leave the gingerbread house masterpieces to the true artists.

It's 3rd Advent Sunday!

The 3rd advent is about love, so this is what we all love:

Luke loves Christmas

Adam loves basketball

Pepper loves Christmas

Jessica loves boys and atmospheres like our advent meal (with candles and music playing)

Beatrice loves going on vacation, Christmas, and boys

Brad loves Jill (!!)

Jill loves everyone at this table and the fact that Brad is finally home for an advent meal

Wishing everyone a LOVEly Christmas!

Today, we finally got our Christmas tree!

The kids and I have all been anxiously waiting for Brad to get home from his business trip to the U.S. so that we could get serious about decorating for Christmas.  Since Brad came home yesterday, we celebrated by piling in the car and going Christmas tree shopping this afternoon.  We put Christmas music on, dragged out all the Christmas boxes, and by nightfall we had an official Christmas house.  We even pulled out all the stops and hung lights outside. 

Our third and final Christmas in Germany has begun!

Tonight was our ward Christmas party, complete with a visit from Santa.

All the Primary children got a gift from Santa, and in return they had to sing a song or recite a poem for the ward.  Adam delighted everyone with his parody of Jingle Bells, which started with "Dashing thru the snow, on a pair of broken skis..." and went on from there.  You can tell by the smirk on his face that he was extremely proud of all the laughs he was getting.

Luke was too shy to sing anything, but Santa was still kind enough to give him a present.

But, this was BY FAR my favorite part of the night:

All the deacons were coerced into being Santa's elves, and when Pepper came trudging in after Santa in this get-up, I nearly died laughing.  I had to look twice to make sure it was really him behind that beard!   

After singing carols, listening to different people talk about Christmas traditions in South Africa, Russia, and Guatemala, we all went downstairs to eat waffles and cookies.

Merry Christmas!

Nothing says "Happy Holidays" like watching a bunch of children's concerts!

Today was Adam's winter concert.  It was the whole elementary school, which meant I got to sit through more than an hour of watching other people's kids before Adam came on with the 5th graders.  Oh well, Adam was worth the wait!

Here is Adam singing his solo in "Kumbaya".  A couple of interesting notes on his fellow students: 1) the girl in the pink turtleneck with the star necklace is Lizzie, Adam's current crush; and 2) the girl standing next to Adam in the vest is Ruby, who was new to the school this year and who Adam thought was a boy for the first two days of school.  Poor Ruby.

This afternoon, I went to watch Pepper's middle school winter concert.  

I was so proud of Pepper!  He announced one of the songs in a loud, clear voice, and even got to sing a little spotlight.  It was great!

Then, tonight was our Relief Society cookie exchange.  I am so glad to have this over.  When we planned it, we wanted it to be a simple, easy activity that wouldn't cause too much stress at an already busy time.  But, unfortunately, it ballooned into a big deal.  Mostly, it meant I've spent the last 3 days in my kitchen baking (NOT my favorite activity), so I was a little grinchy.

 

 

But, now it is all over and I can relax (?) until Christmas.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

We never celebrated St. Nicholas Day before we moved to Germany, and I think it is a very sweet tradition. On the evening of December 5, children are supposed to clean their shoes and place them outside their doors for St. Nicholas to fill with goodies during the night.

I happened to come upstairs just in time to catch Luke finding his chocolate-filled shoes.

My friend Antje likes to spend St. Nicholas Day baking this traditional Swiss bread for her friends.  Can you tell it is shaped like a man?  All those white flecks are big lumps of sugary goodness.  I think it is the perfect Christmas treat.  I'm very lucky to be on Antje's St.-Nicholas-Day-Bread-Man List.

Yesterday we were invited to make Chinese dumplings with the Robertsons, so we postponed our 2nd Advent dinner until tonight.  (The dumplings were fantastic - totally worth pushing advent back a day!)

So, here we are about to enjoy our 2nd Advent meal.

 

Since the 2nd Advent is supposed to be about Joy, we all shared something(s) that bring us joy.  Here is what everyone said:

 

Luke: Christmas, when people aren't mean, when people don't take things away, and when people don't lie about Christmas being real

 

Adam:  having friends at school

 

Pepper:  church and our family (again, extra credit)

 

Jessica:  shopping, Christmas, friends, horseback-riding, blasting music when she's alone in the house, when people compliment her

 

Jill:  when my kids don't fight

Today at church, I was released as 1st counselor in our ward Relief Society.  I'm sure it was a relief to all the sisters who've had to listen to me slaughter the German language as I've tried to conduct the meetings.

Here I am with my dear friends Sarah and Gabi.  Sarah was the president, but her husband was called as bishop last month, so we knew we'd all be released soon.  Gabi was the 2nd counselor, but now she's been called as the new president.

I have truly loved serving with these women (I know everyone says that, but I really mean it).  They have both been so patient with me and picked up a lot of the slack of my language limitations.  They have also graciously used English in all of our presidency meetings so I could understand, and never admitted it was the pain that it must have been.  Both of them are warm, generous, kind, smart, and lovely through and through.

Luckily, I will still be able to work with Gabi in FHV (that's the German way to say Relief Society - aren't you impressed with my skills?  Don't be.)  My new/old calling is to help with the FHV activities, which is what I was doing before I was in the presidency.  I was kind of hoping for a change, but I guess this is a good way for me to finish out our remaining few months in the Dahlem Ward.

Today, I went to a baby shower for my friend Megan.  Megan is having a new little girl in a couple of weeks, so we all had fun oohing and aahing over the sweet little baby-girl stuff.

The shower was held at Alcatraz, our favorite Mexican food restaurant, so we also oohed and aahed over the fajitas and desserts.  All in all, it was a delicious afternoon.

This morning, I got a big chunk of my Christmas shopping done with Susanne and Denise, and then I came home to this:

My dreamy, dreamy Mann sent me these flowers for our 17th anniversary.  That card came with the flowers, but I'm not going to share what it said because it is not appropriate for all audiences.

I had no idea what a great man I was marrying 17 years ago.  I just thought he was cool and cute and funny and awesome to talk to.  After 17 years, I can't imagine my life without him, and I am grateful every day to have such a quality man in my life. 

Today, I couldn't find the remote control to the AppleTV (a near tragedy), which prompted an in-depth search under the couch and chair cushions. 

The cracks next to the arms are very deceptive.  If you stick your hand down in them, there are big 6-inch-plus deep garbage-collecting pockets.  This is all the stuff I retrieved from them today.  I haven't seen that remote or the two chair-arm covers since we lived in Michigan.

This is an intersection near my kids' school:

And, this is what I imagine every time I see the sign:

There is something so right about the marriage of these two minds.

Look what I found written on Jessica's bedroom mirror today:

I don't know when she wrote it, or what prompted her, but I will take it.