This year was the first time we spent Christmas away from our families (other than mission years). It didn’t feel like we were isolated though. We got to spend some time with our parents and almost all our siblings on the webcam. It was fun to wake up early in the morning so we could see my mom and dad open up their Christmas/30th anniversary present. We put some money toward a big trip they’ll be taking in a couple months. We’ve had the stupid webcam for over a year, and we just now got around to setting it up. It was so much more fun than regular phone calls, so I think we’ll use it a lot more from now on.

On Christmas Eve we went with the Mascaros to the Cook’s. On Christmas Day we spent the evening at the Mascaro’s at a loud kid-filled party. The Baumanns, Sannemans and James Gardiner were there. I think playing so much with the kids is starting to force me to learn some Swiss German too. Elisa gave SO many airplane rides and horsey rides to the kids! Christmas felt good because of the quality time with friends.

We received some 2-player games for Christmas, and I love playing games with Elisa. He especially likes playing games with me when I do not get mad because I am losing. These games are not so competitive so I was all smiles, and so was Chad! We also got some new warm clothes, Swiss-German books and American condiments. If anyone is thinking of shipping any other packages to Europe, please just wait until we visit or until a friend can take the package in a suitcase. Shipping costs are just way too expensive.

We put up a recipe site to give to our Moms. It has all our family recipes that we could find. Elisa spent many a long hour typing in recipe directions. Any family and friends can use it: http://recipes.parry.org/. Chad is my little genius, I am so proud of the cool things he managed to do for our families this year.