I hope you have been well over the past few weeks.  We have been keeping ourselves very busy since my parents arrived in town late November.  Starting off with hosting our first American Thanksgiving dinner. It was news to me when I found out Canadian Thanksgiving was in October and since we missed it, we went all out for the American holiday.

As some of you know, I am enlisted in the United States Air Force and with that being said I have access to the military bases posted around Europe.  These bases carry every American item you could possibly want, and we did…want!  We journeyed out to base the day before Thanksgiving to stock up on items for our feast which consisted of 1 giant turkey, 1 ham, stuffing (baked inside of the turkey), cranberries, sweet potatoes topped with brown sugar and pecans, fruit salad, green bean casserole, corn, mashed potatoes, apple pies, pecan pies, pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie cheesecake, coconut cream pie, and a few other select items!

My mom and I started cooking/baking early in the morning, I would say before 10 and luckily other people were helping.  In charge of apple pies were the Trews, to bake and watch over the turkey was one Mr. Ty Morris, and the Ham (my favorite) was left in the careful hands of Cody Thornton.  There was no way we would have been able to bake everything in our little kitchen.  Speaking of little kitchens, one thing that is very different from back home is the size of our refrigerator.  In the states we don’t shop every day for groceries, it’s a once a week or even once every other week type of thing.  It is quite an adjustment for us since I think our fridge was built for a dollhouse!

(Picture Amber McIvor)

Anyways, we had about 22 people show up for thanksgiving and the food lasted all of 5 minutes!  We said “food’s ready” and then it was like vultures surrounding the table.  We couldn’t refill plates fast enough.  I thought it was really special that some of the items we made had never been tried before.  Martin Davidek had stuffing for the first time, second time, and third time and Elia fell in love with sweet potatoes covered in candied pecans.

The night ended with a few beers and some loud karaoke singing.  Cody even brought out his guitar and graced us with some tunes.  It was a wonderful night shared with good friends and good food, an event that we will definitely do next year!

As for the remainder of our time, it has been filled with driving here and there; attempting to take my parents to as many places as we can. We made the trip up to Neuschwansteins the first day and it was covered in snow and absolutely beautiful.  Since then we have traveled to Heilbronn to watch the game and on the way stopped at the Ingolstadt outlets.  Lets just say they are not like the outlets back home!  Back home they mean cheap prices and good deals, these were fashion outlets and their good deals must have been based on Brad Pitt’s budget, therefore we did some wonderful window-shopping

The drive to Heilbronn was not so bad and it made the trip worth it since the boys were able to snag a win!  I met with some of the fans during the game and then afterwards again at a McDonalds stop!  Riley LOVES Big Mac’s! For Christmas I might just put bows on a bunch of Big Mac boxes!

Speaking of Christmas, I have now frozen my butt off trekking through numerous markets.  We have now been through Ingolstadt, Heilbronn, Salzburg, and Nuremburg.  We went to Nuremburg’s yesterday and it was raining on us, but people didn’t seem to mind they just kept laughing and drinking their Gluhwein.  My mom and I had to laugh because where we come from drinking is not tolerated like this.  You cant buy booze anywhere in Salt Lake Ciry, you can only order one drink at a time, and in some places you can only order a drink if you have ordered food as well, and here we are in Germany where its being sold at every corner!  It is Awesome!

As for this coming weekend, we will not be making the trip to Bad Nauheim but we wish all of those who do a safe journey.  I hope to see everyone at the game on Sunday, and that we have a win, no high fives did not go over well with Miss Peyton last Sunday.  I want to send a big Thank you to Stefan for the letters you have sent us.  The information is awesome, and we really appreciate the time and thoughtfulness that is put into them.  As I always say, the fans here are excellent and he is a prime example!

Until next time…

Amber