If you click the link below in blue you will get the PDF Holiday letter.

It was a hard one to write this year since we are in the process of moving again.  We have no start date, or in fact, no specific job. But we are envisioning that we will be leaving Germany in the next six months or sooner.  We would love to stay.  Of course it is all very nostalgic for us now as we attend our last Christmas Markets and prepare for our last family ski trips in the Alps.  We part ways with our European experience with heavy hearts. But it has been a year in the making.  Landstuhl Regional Medical center seems to be falling apart around us.  The joke is that CJ has been playing the violin on the titanic now for a year.  We just adore his colleagues and it is so sad to know we will all be scattering to the four corners of the world.

But I guess these are the stakes when you play big like we have been in life.  It would have been so predictable to stay in one place.  I know it is never easy, whether you stay in the hometown you grew up in, or if you are like us and travel the world.  But I can tell you that moving every three years is exhausting!  I am getting pretty good at setting up a house. I can get it all unpacked, art on the walls, curtains hung and looking like a home in about six weeks.  That is six weeks of NOTHING else though.  It is torture.

So, wish us luck as we prepare again for a major move.  Hershy and Aly will be in their little cat carriers for a long flight home, under our seats hopefully.  Everything we own will be boxed and crated. Vehicles sent on a ship, plants given away, basically anything that has dirt on it, tossed or given away.  It is always quite a project. You really have to respect our military folks who do this all the time!  God bless those families. It is much work, loss and expense with restarting and rebuilding homes.

With that I am off to bake my last Christmas cookies in this house in Germany.  The upside to knowing it is your last season in a place is that you don’t take anything for granted!

Cheers to you and yours!Holiday letter3 2013