Joyeux Noël! Fröhliche Weihnachten! Merry Christmas!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, regardless of your beliefs of Christmas itself. For me, it’s a great opportunity to spend time with friends or family and to eat yourself stupid.

Most of our family and friends are thousands of miles away, but this year, they came to us for celebration and feasting. We had 6 guests in the end: from Leipzig, Germany; Barcelona, Spain and from London, England.

We managed somehow to accommodate everyone with enough bedding and then also somehow to feed everyone despite some initial storage concerns. Everyone helped cook, and though the weather was terrible, we amused ourselves by playing card games, Kubb and watching Die Hard movies.

We distributed Secret Santa gifts via the German game Schrottwichteln which Tom and I first played in Munich and one day we rented a car and drove out to the Cévennes National Park which was spectacularly beautiful.