Out with the old: bye bye 2008!

December was a blur - we ended up having a rather sick, slow, quiet, sick, holiday season. Did I mention sick? There was reason to visit a hospital and witness a meal. If you thought American hospital food was icky, wait till you see what this German hospital served up:
Sausage, sauerkraut, instant mashed potatoes, glass of buttermilk, salty soup broth, and a banana. Somebody once brought to my attention that there should never be an all-beige plate of food, and I thought of them when I saw this meal. Total grossness. No wonder people lose weight and are weak when they leave the hospital. Everything here looks like it came out of a can except the not-quite-ripe banana.
High points of December: finishing the German class, visiting the Prices, discovering the movie Mamma Mia (english track, yes!), getting all the little treats packed and labled for Stefan's class Christmas party, getting our first tree, dinner with our Bible Study group, and Christmas Eve with Stefan's mom and brother. Due to the illnesses only one Christmassy thing was cooked - peanut butter blossom cookies thanks to a bag of Hershey Kisses in our USA stash.
This is our 3rd married Christmas together, but all prior holidays we've been away too long to justify getting a tree of our own. This year we did, and I'm so glad we made the effort! After having bought trees on both West and East coasts, and in the Mid-West of the US, I can safely say American trees don't look like the typical Christmas trees available in our area of Germany. German trees tend to be super bushy on the bottom, then skinny and scrawny from the middle up. We visited 5 or more different lots before returning to the lot that apparently had all the German rejects. They were a motley crew, but we came home with something that worked in our space and had some green up top.
Stefan came down with the flu on Christmas Eve and since that's when his family does all the celebrations, it was less than ideal. He spent most of the day napping on his mom's couch, battling chills and fevers. We had a lovely turkey lunch, time with Frank, great church service that evening, and then we opened all the presents. Stefan's mom had lots and lots of cookies baked, so everybody feasted on the plates laying around throughout the day. Stefan's constant resting allowed him to be functional during the critical moments of the day, so it worked out. Here's a Christmas music box Stefan's mom has that has been handed down in her family, along with a few other things she decorated with:

Four days later he was better and I was down for the count. I got a worse case and had several days of fever and basically a week of total fatigue. New Years was a total wash. We had to cancel the party we had planned and I spent the evening sleeping, watching movies, sleeping and then peering out the window to watch the city erupt in fireworks. We have a good view of town and it was fun to see everything going off everywhere and over the castle too. The pictures below aren't ours, but it looks like the view from our house. You can click on them to make them bigger. You can see how everybody gets to shoot off rockets anywhere in town, craziness! It kind of makes you think this must be how war could be like.