Holiday Festivities

Just to bring everyone up to speed I wanted to share some highlights from our winter break.  Aside from Christmas we were able to enjoy some of the regional traditions during the holiday break. Back home we always spend a day in San Francisco to go ice skating and see all the Christmas decorations. This has become an annual tradition and admittedly I was a bit sad to be missing it this year.  So we decided to go to our closest big city, Geneva, and take in the Christmas sights there.  It was spectacular!!  For the last 3 years, Geneva has hosted a beautiful festival of lights, called Geneva Lux. A display of 17 works of lights by Swiss and International Artists situated throughout the city. Most of them were in and around Old Town Geneva and along the water.  We had a lovely afternoon and evening strolling through town and enjoying the lights.

One of many chocolate shops!  Yummy!!

The "bubble man" let Lola and I take a go at it.

This was actually an 8 minute light show set to music on the front of the Four Seasons. 

Definitely the most impressive of all that we saw.

We ended the evening at Starbucks for coffee and hot chocolate.  This was actually the first Starbucks I had seen since arriving in France last August.  I have to admit it was pretty exciting to see that familiar mermaid logo.  But when we got inside to order our drinks I just had to take a photo of the prices!!!

Seriously?!?!  You know you're in Geneva, Switzerland when your small "classic hot chocolate" costs almost $7.00.  It was a splurge we all enjoyed and won't be doing again anytime soon.

We also got to head up into the mountains to enjoy some ice skating in Morzine with some friends from school.  Was at first going to tackle the outdoor rink but was way too cold so we headed to the indoor rink.

Teah getting her ice skating legs back.  It's been a whole year since we were last on the ice.

Lola skating with Papa and her friend Lison.

Lola with her friends posing for one last shot before packing up the skates and heading to the closest bar for hot chocolates and vin chaud (hot wine)!

November and December have been very dry here so we didn't get to enjoy the snow or do some skiing over the break. Typically this time of year we would have been able to do both.  But apparently this is the driest winter on record for the last 60 years!!  I sort of feel like the drought is following us. For the last 3 years in California we've been living with a drought, we leave and it's been non-stop rain and snow there. We arrive in France and it's been the driest winter in 60 years!  Was starting to feel a bit jinxed but then this last week have seen lots of snow.  Perhaps January and February will still be snow filled.

Another really cool thing we got to do over the holidays was visit Le fabuleux village ou la legende des flottins in Evian.  (click on the link to read more about the village) Evian has been hosting this village for the last 10 years during the holidays. It was originally created as an alternative to the traditional Christmas Markets hosted by different villages throughout the region.  It's totally magical and amazing.  All the "flottins" are made entirely from driftwood and they're placed throughout the entire city.  We had so much fun walking around and exploring all of them.

Some other highlights of the holiday.....finishing a 1000 piece puzzle from Santa with Papa.....and the girls getting their very first haircuts from a salon.  It was Mamie's gift to them plus new dresses for New Year's Eve.

Of course doing the puzzle in our new bear jammies and ear muffs!!

Marc was determined to finish this puzzle before school started.  

Many hours were spent in that corner.

And it happened!  Literally the night before.

Teah was so excited for the hair cut, up until she was actually sitting in that chair.  

Second thoughts?!?!  And don't you just love that hilarious princess cape she's wearing!

Not one smile until it was all said and done.  She was so excited with her new cut that the next morning the first thing she asked me when she woke up was if her hair was still short?  She was afraid it had grown back over night.

Lola on the other hand was definitely more into it.  Big smiles from the beginning.

Finished product...and with "frange" (bangs in French).  Not my choice but she really wanted them, so....who was I to cramp her style.

 And then we got to round everything out with New Year's Eve.  Holy cow!  Another food orgy is all I can say to describe it.  Except this time it was a very late food orgy.  We didn't even start appetizers until 9pm, sat down to dinner around 11pm, took a break to ring in the new year with fireworks and chinese lanters, returned to the table for bread and cheese around 1am, followed by dessert around 2am!!  There are just no words to adequately describe this experience.  Of course the food was amazing, as always.

Appetizers -- oysters and champagne, sushi (that Marc made) and sake
1st Course -- salad with seared salmon
Entree -- lamb tagine with couscous
Bread and Cheese
Dessert -- citrus salad, ice cream buche de noel, and a dark chocolate cake

My sister-in-law outdid herself as always with the table setting!

The girls showing off their new dresses and haircuts.

Once dinner started I guess I was too famished to actually stop and take any photos.  Sorry about that.

Break from the table for Chinese lanterns and fireworks.

The French really do know how to end a meal!!  

Delicious, amazing desserts, which somehow you always magically make room for.

We got to bed at 3:30am and were back at Mamie and Papi's the next day at noon for lunch. Unbelievable!!  On the menu.....Braserade (a traditional Savoie specialty).  Oh boy!!  I have to say sitting down to the table with trays of raw meat staring back at me was not what I had in mind.  I honestly was still full from the night before. The girls reaction was pretty funny too.  As Mamie starts putting chunks of raw meat on their plates they look at me with that shocked expression of "are we seriously about to eat raw meat?!?!" Now of course the intent was not to eat the meat raw.  We were cooking them as we went on the table-top grill.

I ate my share (like any good French daughter-in-law would) and followed it with a lot of salad, then more bread, cheese, and dessert.  Ugh!  At this point I'm not sure the exact culprit but I was literally sick for the next 2 days.  To spare you any graphic details let's just say my body was clearly cleansing. Did I pick up the "gastro" bug that had been going around, did I get food poisoning from the raw meats that were touching my plate, or did I simply eat too much?!  Who knows, but a detox was just the doctor ordered.

Not exactly the image I had for starting off the New Year but here we are.  A New Year!!  With another 6 months to go in France and a lot of unanswered questions still in front of us.  What will this year bring?  At this point I have no idea.  But I can safely say that I'm excited to see what it will be.

Happy New Year everyone!!