We needed to take a trip out of Austria for visa purposes, so we headed to London.  I've been so excited for this trip.  London is my favorite city!!  We've vacationed there twice before.  The old world charm and vibe of the city just fascinates me!!

We got there late Monday evening.  Our flight was delayed a bit so we didn't get to bed until almost 2 am our time.  The kids did so well though!  Our first night we stayed at a hotel near the Gatwick airport, then Tuesday headed to our hotel near the city center.

There is a nice little Christian hotel called The Highbury Centre.  They give discounts to missionaries.  It's no 5 star hotel, but it's cheap (for London) and in a great location to downtown.
After dropping our bags in our room, we headed to Oxford Street.
 Karis picked out a robe and bag.  Reegan picked out slippers and a Repunzel doll.

We then headed to meet our friends and colleagues, the James, who were also in London.  We ate some dinner and headed to Chinatown.




We had a great first day!!!  I'll be back to share more!

Our kids have been asking for bikes since we moved to Spain last year.  Because we had an idea (by Christmas time last year) that we might be moving again, we decided to wait to purchase bikes.
So, this Christmas it was time they had their own bikes.

Austrians are serious about their bikes, which means they can be costly!  We decided to head to Hungary to a store we knew from living in Spain.

Our hour and a half drive to Gyor, Hungary proved to be fruitful!  We found bikes for the kids in the price range we were shooting for.

I was so excited to see their little faces on Christmas morn!  But we knew we couldn't just wheel the bikes into the house or they might wake up in the night and discover their gifts.

We thought through how we could make a little puzzle/scavenger hunt for them to find their gift.

We first let them open their gifts under the tree.  They saw they got bike helmets, but they still weren't sure if they were getting bikes.
Next we got down their stockings.  It was then that they found a little note saying to look under their pillow.  They went racing to see what they could find.

 They have one red chair in their room and the other is in the hobby room in the yard, but they didn't remember that.  So we talked them through it, giving them some ideas and hints as they thought about it.

Once they figured it out, they went running.  It was so fun and they were so excited!!



The rest of the day was a somewhat relaxing day.  Bike riding included!  Kristi & Eli joined us for the evening.

I also did some cleaning and preparing, because the next day, the 26th we headed to London for 4 days!!  More about that in the posts to come!

The Elementary students had their Christmas choir performance last week.  They did such a great job!

It was called Candy Cane Christmas and it was really neat to see how they wove in the story of Jesus to the candy cane.
 Karis' friend C had been to our house to play and the girls asked if they could wear these San Isidro costumes (C is wearing Reegan's costume....Reegan was ok with that.  She had her own special dress to wear.) to their Christmas performance.  Why not??  Aren't they cute?
This video is LONG, but I know the grandparents will want to watch.  Feel free to take a look, skip around and even hear some German.  They were really cute!!


ICSV Christmas Performance 2011 from JerryInEurope on Vimeo.


Merry Christmas to you!!  May you have a blessed Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ!!

The kids had a day off recently and instead of wasting the day away I decided we should make cookies.  Kristi was wanting to do something that day, so we invited them over for cookie baking.

I think I've expressed it before, but the reality of baking with my kids has turned out nothing like those dreams I use to have before kids came along!  Ha!  I pictured myself this calm mom who doesn't mind flour all over her kitchen or a sticky table.  Unfortunately, I am not that mama.  I got a little stressed about them rolling out the dough.  I look back on it and I think "Why did I get so stressed? It's only cookies!" It is something to do with the rolling where I just about lost it, because I could care less how messy they looked after adding the frosting.  Luckily, we all survived!






Kristi wanted to check out the Christmas market at the Schloss Hof.  It's located near the Slovakia border.  We left the hubbies and kids behind and made it a girl's outing.





Shetland ponies.  What you don't see is what happened right after this picture.  That little pony decided to try and take a bite out of my coat sleeve!



 It's been fun to see more of Austria!