Garrett is now an official member of the US Air Force.
Mom & Krystal (his Fiancee) pin on the rank 
Later that night we all went to a John Schmidt concert in SLC. It was very entertaining!
The sidewalk to the back of the house
The front steps the night I got back
And last but not least, the back yard and my 4-foot-tall bird bath.
Fortunately the days since the blizzard have been slightly above freezing, so the area is recovering fairly well. More snow/ice on the way Christmas day. But we will be safely in Spokane Washington - assuming Chicago does not get snowy on the days we fly through there.
There's only one word for the Christmas markets and city lights at this time of year: magical. If there's anything comparable in the US, I'm not aware of it.
I landed in Germany on Saturday morning, and I was at this Christmas market in the city of Esslingen that afternoon. No time to waste on jet lag!
Some pictures of a booth selling lebkuchen and one of the churches in town.
The next Christmas market was in the town of Ludwigsburg.
I especially liked the angel lights at this Christmas market.
As you can tell from this picture, it was rainy and a Monday evening, so the market wasn't crowded at all.
My best photo of the angel lights.
The friend I was visiting, Chele Taylor, and I took a bus tour to Zurich, Switzerland.
The Zurich Christmas market has two claims to fame: it's held indoors at the main train station, and the 30-foot tall tree decorated entirely with Swarovski crystal. The tour left to return Germany at 4:15pm, so we didn't get to see the tree with lights at night. I'll bet it's very sparkly at night.
We saw St. Nicholas riding a street car in Zurich.
Our next stop was to the Chocolate market in the university town of Tubingen. The town itself was full of really picturesque houses and streets. The lady in the picture is painting a design with chocolate on a dress made of chocolate.
Every time we turned a corner we found another fun street lined with half-timbered houses.
The market sold chocolate from all around the world. We had lots of interesting samples. We didn't see any booths selling American chocolate, though.
The town was even more fun to see at night. We thought we'd only stay a couple of hours, and ended up staying six! The weather was perfect for December--dry and not too cold.
This picture is of the old city hall (rathaus) at night.
Our next Christmas market was in the city of Stuttgart. I should mention that all these markets were within a 30-minute drive of where Chele lives. I'd been to the Stuttgart market three times before, so I knew my way around. It's one of the biggest, and in my opinion, one of the best Christmas markets in Germany.
I've seen stars like this for sale at almost every Christmas market I've ever been to.
I found these piano ornaments made of Bethlehem olivewood, and bought one for each of my piano students.
In spite of the crowds we saw some cute buildings and Christmas lights.
Our last stop was the French city of Strasbourg.
When I went to the Strasbourg Christmas market three or four years ago I started collecting some figures for my French nativity set. This year I picked out a few more pieces to add to it.
I had a wonderful, wonderful week in Germany. It was great to be back, especially at my favorite time of year. It was the perfect way to kick off the Christmas season. 
We were living in Germany when the Berlin wall came down. The first time I went through Checkpoint Charlie to go from West Berlin to East Berlin in 1985 was one of the most exciting things I'd done in my life to that point.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that less than five years later the "Iron Curtain" would come down. Side note: You know you're grooving on my 1990's fashion sense!
We weren't in Berlin on November 9, 1989, but we took the kids on the train a few months later so they could have the chance to chip away at the Berlin Wall.
Kent and I had gone to Berlin in January without the kids, but came home and immediately made plans to return with the children.
Lissa--age seven
Garrett--age 6
Tyler--age 3
Adrianne--age 20 months
Last weekend I met Kent at work and we drove over to the Shenandoah mountains. We wanted to spend the night so we could get an early start on Saturday to see the fall colors. We had to contend with DC traffic getting out of the city, so it took us over four hours to get to the Residence Inn we were staying at in the town of Waynesboro, which is right at the entrance to Shenandoah National Park. 
We woke up on Saturday to a very overcast and rainy day, but we put on our raincoats and headed out. In the mountains there were rainy patches, but the sun did occasionally peek out.
Skyline Drive was built during the Depression as one of FDR's civilian work corps projects. It's built along the top ridge of the mountains, with a scenic viewpoint stop almost every mile.
You may notice in many of these pictures the stone wall built along the side of the road. You don't see those very many places in the U.S.!
Unfortunately, our camera didn't do a very good job of capturing the vividness of the fall colors.
We'd planned to do some hiking in the national forest, but didn't because of the rain.
One reason I chose to stay in Waynesboro was because it was close to the small town which was the inspiration for the 70's tv series, "The Waltons". Some of you may remember that Kent went through a phase while we were living in Germany where he was watching the DVD's of "The Waltons". Let's see, I think it was after his "Bonanza" phase and before his "Daniel Boone" phase.
When we moved to Virginia and found out there was a "Walton's Mountain" Museum, we knew we'd have to go there one day. We had to drive on some small, winding, and even a dirt road to get to the itty-bitty town, but we got there. Surprisingly enough, there were about 20-30 other people in the little museum that rainy Saturday afternoon.
The museum had some replicas of some of the sets from the TV show, and lots of memorabilia, like lunchboxes, paper dolls, games and books from the 70's. It was interesting, and we learned lots about the man who wrote the book the series was based on, and about the actors who played the different characters. 
All in all we had a nice weekend, with maybe more driving than we'd wanted to, because of the rain. We were home by dinner time on Saturday. 
