Christmas post!

I know it's hard to believe, but here I am, with a Christmas story and pictures! I finally managed to write everything up, and I was once again overcome by how amazing the last few days were.
I'm sorry I had to break my promise in regards to the pictures yesterday - but here they are! :)
Have fun!

 Christmas at Andy's parents house. It was really delicious, and as you can see, there were many people and waaay more food.

I had a really great time, even though I was a bit cold in church!

And I have to warn you: There is a bit about Hockey, but if you skip that, there are more pictures and I talk about today!

 Jenna, me, and Bob Christmas morning.

We had agreed to stand up at eight o'clock, but in wise foresight I put my alarm for seven fifteen. Five minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
Not that I really minded, of course, because I was at least already dressed, and hey, it was Christmas - even though I might not have felt very Christmassy, church the day before had taken care of that!

 So we all trudged upstairs, where the stockings were waiting for us!

Stockings are really awesome. They're like St. Nikolaus' day, just on Christmas, which is kind of.... really A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!

On the right you can see what was in my stocking - lots of sweets, peanut butter (even Santa is making fun of me!), maple syrup, more chocolate, hot chocolate, a shirt (I love it and am wearing it right now!), ball point pens, a subway gift card, shower gel & body lotion (they're really great!) and... the best of all: Two tickets to a Kelowna Rockets Hockey game!
Jenna got "Mario Party 8" and Bobby Just Dance 4 - and yesterday I danced for an hour! (Since I was jumping up and down before hand, my calves are kind of sore today...)

 Here's the tree before we attacked it!


Down below there's Jenna, me and Bob, in the middle of unpacking our stockings - I can tell you, it's waaaaaaay more fun if there are people your age (or closer to your age/younger) with whom you can share your fun. It's just not the same as unpacking it with adults, who anyway know what's inside.








At eight thirty, Andy's sister and his parents came over, and there was more unpacking. Jenna gifted a few truly amazing pictures, and I was stunned - I hadn't known she was that good, and just wow. She is really great with paint and crafts!

That sweater that Andy's wearing (you can see the
maple leave) is the Team Canada Olympic Jersey
and their Jerseys look so much better than the
German one!

We had brunch; an egg dish, a potato dish (I need that recipe, it was just really, really great), lots of fruit, cinnamon buns with icing, and coffee, and a great time.

In the afternoon/evening, we went to Tanya's parents' house, since we'd been to Andy's parents house the day before, and I got mittens (Olympic mittens) from the grandparents and a shirt and Lindor from Brenda, Tanya's sister, and we had another Turkey dinner - after the girls had unpacked their other presents:

Lego Hogwarts Castle and Lego Hagrid's hut.
They were really awesome - we already built Hagrid's hut and are almost finished with the castle!

Before dinner, there were of course Christmas crackers; afterwards we all had to wear the ridiculous (but fun) crowns that had been in them and played with the toys.

The Turkey Dinner was also really good, and I can say that I have honestly never seen so much food at a table that wasn't a birthday party with buffet; it just seemed like the supply of carrots, gravy, turkey, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes would not end!

We ended up playing Shangri-la afterwards, similar to the German Phase 10, and even though I came last by a huuuuuge margin, it was maybe the most fun game I've had in a while!
You wouldn't believe me how many games I have been playing lately.
I'm almost daily playing Rommee with Bobby, and then there was the Shangri-La yesterday, and ... well, more later (more on today, I mean)

These are my presents, a lot of knitted things from my mom (two awesome pairs of socks, two scarves - the girls got loops, and they LOVE them, Bobby was wearing hers today!), a knitted owl (I am an owl, school mascots are taken serious here, so Who's house? Owls' house!), black gaiters [Stulpen] and, best of all - does anybody recognize him?
The guy sitting there with my headphones? - Eleven. The eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, from Doctor Who. Then, of course, new headphones (I was looking forward to them sooooo much, and they're just as awesome as my old ones. Could be because they are just like my old ones....). There is Kinderpunsch, children's punch, from Lara, and Christmas cookies and a mug, and more soap and my new fountain pen (although not very well recognizable) and my mittens and the wallet Bobbye made, and the bookmark Jenna made, my new jacket (also awesome and really nicely warm) and a shoulder bag, which is really handy. And of course the Calgary shirt!

Here's all the chocolate from my Stocking. I really hope I don't have to eat it all by myself, you would be able to roll me if I did!

This morning, I woke up at eight thirty, not because I couldn't sleep anymore (I couldn't really go to bed last night, so I was tired), but because ... of the Hockey game!

Germny had really ugly jerseys, black with the ugly, ugly, ugly eagle on the front, and I knew all of two guys - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, #9 for the Canadians, and Tobias Rieder for Germany. The former because he was (as far as I know, I'm not sure about the German team) the only NHLer in this game (as I said, at least on the Canadian side) and is a pretty good player for the Edmonton Oilers, of which my hostfather is a huge fan of, and the latter because of two reasons: Andy had been telling me about him, that the Oilers had drafted him but put him in the minor league (the not so good team) and that he was German, and because he is German, in the NHL (well, almost), and since he is from ... Bad Abbach! Talking about that town, best regards to Katrinle and her family! :)

Well, unsurprisingly the Canadians wiped the floor with the German's, and even though I had said I wouldn't cheer for the German's, in the end if was impossible.
I'm kind of glad to know that I still regard Germany as my home country.

The game was ... kind of disappointing. I mean, I have only seen one game in its entirety, and that was the rockets game, but in this game today there were so many passes that didn't connect, and once the Canadian gave the perfect assist on a goal... it was just really bad (for the Canadians) that it was a goal for the Germans!

So yeah. We lost 3-9, but hey, we got three goals against the Hockey Nation out there!

Afterwards, Jenna and I played Just Dance, because Bobby was at her friend's and we couldn't start the Lego without her, but she came back quickly enough and assembled Hagrid's hut.

Then we started on the castle, interrupted when we went for dinner to family friends, and even though I wasn't hungry in the least - Jenna had made Hot Dogs, and I of course couldn't say no - it was a really enjoyable time.

I talked to the older son (first year college), which was really interesting, and then the middle son (my age, tenth grade) and I had to team up for Sequence, a board game which we lost spectacularly against Andy and the other father, Jim, and Tanya and Leslie - we didn't took the rules the wrong way, which is why the former team would have won, but the latter team did in the end:
For sequence you have cards on your hand, put one down and place a playing chip according to it on a board. Aim: Have a sequence of five.
We assumed you needed two sequences of five. Andy and Jim were the first to have one sequence of five, and Tanya and Leslie the first to have two sequences of five.

Jim and Leslie gave each of us a hot chocolate mix, a mug and bath salts, which was kind of the end of Christmas and Boxing Day.

We ended the day by finishing assembling the Lego, but it's not yet completely finished.

And here, as per request, pictures of our Lego adventures. Jenna and Bobby on the floor of the playroom, with Lego all strewn over the place. There were three seperate parts of the Hogwarts castle, which is why each of us took one of the instruction booklets (you can see my part below), and as it was to be expected considering that it's 8-14 and I have a lot of expertise at building Lego houses, I was the first one finished.

So, that was today.
I hope you had an equally fine and enjoyable Christmas, and I have to say that this might well have been the best and most amazing Christmas I have every had the pleasure to celebrate.

Magic Cube

There was lots of family, meeting nice people - Brenda's partner Shane and I bonded over Jenna's magic cube - she disassembled it and left it to me to put it back together, which was harder than I had thought - I failed, then Shane failed, and then we managed to put it together with our combined prowess of mind (and then it only took us like... ten minutes). Here's a step by step walk through - I took it apart again after we had managed it, because I wanted to try it on my own but was afraid that I wouldn't be able to put it back together, so I snapped a photo of each step, showing which part I took off in which direction. You can see it on the right!

So, have a great second Weihnachtsfeiertag, guys, for me ... I have to man up (haha) and do some school work tomorrow!
Enjoy your holidays!