Moran Family Fun

Christmas Eve is the best day of the year around here. We have the excitement of Christmas coupled with the excitement of Samantha's birthday. She's our sweet Christmas Eve baby and we love celebrating her every year on December 24th. I know lots of people with December birthdays feel like they are missing out on something or that their special day gets lost in the Christmas festivities. Luckily Samantha doesn't mind . . . yet.   This year she wasn't feeling well on her birthday so we had to quickly celebrate during the brief moments when the tylenol had kicked in and she was feeling somewhat happy. We could tell the fever was back and it was time for a new dose when she would get weepy for no reason at all. It's never fun to be sick, especially not on your birthday, but Samantha is usually the kind of kid who makes the best of things and I think she had a fun day despite being sick.  Samantha wanted to eat lunch, open presents, and then have birthday ...

Natalie is nine and we had such fun celebrating her birthday as a family. We let the girls choose the order of events on their special day and Natalie had her plan in place weeks in advance of the actual day. We would start by opening presents, then go out for dinner, and finally come home and have birthday cake. Once everyone was home from their various schools, jobs, and other activities we began the celebration! Present opening with Natalie is fun because she is basically overjoyed about every single present. She  loves everything she receives and is always so immediately grateful for what she's been given. This year the one thing she wanted more than anything else was an SD card for an old digital camera we've passed on to her. For some reason it didn't have one already so she could only take seven or so pictures before the camera's internal memory was full. And there was no way to get those pictures off the camera because we long ago lost the cable that would ...

Traveling Space Available is a really nice military benefit - seven round trip tickets to Europe for $370 is an amazing deal! The only downside is that you're at the mercy of the military. You can only fly when and where the military wants to go so it's important to be flexible. Just because I want to get to Hawaii on Tuesday doesn't mean the military does. Military flights are subject to delays or cancellations so it's best to have a back up plan to get to your destination or find a hotel while you wait. Plus, you can only fly if there are empty seats. Many flights don't take passengers at all and others will fill up with other people before they even get to your name. Or a last minute official duty passenger will need a seat and you'll find yourself bumped from the flight you'd thought you were on. It takes both financial and emotional preparedness to navigate the system and be willing to change your plans at a moment's notice. For us the benefits outw...

Our only Sunday in Germany was the day Natalie woke up with a stomach bug. It was great that it was Sunday so we'd already planned to take a day for nothing but church meetings. Jared took the rest of the girls to church and Natalie and I stayed home. It was the perfect opportunity for me to work on getting our bags organized and try to figure out how we were going to get all the things we'd bought into our suitcases for the flight home. By the time the rest of the family came home from church Natalie was feeling much better and, even better, no one else caught her mystery illness.  The original plan was to start trying to fly back to Maryland on Sunday or Monday but the first available flight wasn't until Tuesday. That meant Monday was wide open for one last Christmas market! We settled on Koblenz, the beautiful city where the Rhein and Mosel Rivers meet. We made our way to the center of town, found parking, and stared wandering in search of the market. The market in ...

Our one and only Saturday in Germany was spent where most of our Saturdays were spent when we lived there - in Kaiserslautern! Even though we'd already visited the Christmas market there we wanted to go again so the littlest girls could go to the Kinderbackerei and make sugar cookies and we wanted to visit Doner King, which is our very favorite Doner place! Another meal of Doner Kebabs brought our tally to three doners in six days. Some days the beauty of Madison surprises me. Even sitting around waiting for a Kebab she looks amazing. We love our red-headed beauty! When we moved to the Kaiserslautern area in 2008 we already knew we loved Doners. The first Doner place we tried was Doner King in Einsiedlerhof. I guess you could say it was love at first bite? They had a little restaurant just outside the base where Jared was working and he would often eat lunch there. In fact, he went to eat at Doner King so often that the owners knew Jared on a first name basis and consi...

If you really want to hear the truth, ask a German. They tend to be direct and to the point so if you ask a German, "Does this look good on me?" be prepared for an honest, blunt opinion - good or bad. They won't say something looks good on you if it doesn't and that can be a little off putting for Americans who are used to small talk and over-politeness. I still remember the time Natalie's Kindergarten teacher told me that Natalie was lazy and, unlike Samantha, didn't work very hard at learning German correctly. This frankness may feel like rudeness to Americans, but it's really not. Germans just tend to be direct and to the point. During our time at the Cochem Christmas market I was the object of this particular cultural quirk. We'd stayed up very late the night before and the little sleep I did get was terrible. You could definitely tell by looking at me that I was tired and because I forgot to bring makeup with me when I packed for our visit wi...

The next stop on our Christmas market adventure was Trier. We love Trier, it's the first German city we explored and it's actually the first Christmas market we ever went to way back in 2000 or 2001. We've been to Trier's Christmas market at least three or four times now and it never disappoints. Next to Kaiserslautern, there's no market we've been to more so Trier was definitely a familiar place. Trier's Porta Nigra, or Black Gate, was built by the Romans in 200 AD. So yeah, Trier's a pretty old place. Just past the Porta Nigra is the main square in town, the cathedral, and the Christmas Market! We arrived at the market just as the sun was starting to set and made our way to the place we always go first in Trier - the Bratkartoffeln stand. The roasted potatoes in Trier are the very best we've tried and they were the perfect warm and filling way to start the night. Of course, we did some of our favorite things to do at Christmas m...