A White Boxing Day!

The kids have long dreamed of a white Christmas. They have not gotten one yet during our Germany time though we had a least two white Easters. This year, like the past two previous ones, Christmas day was mild enough for a walk through the nearby forest with sweatshirts only.  But grey clouds ominously filled the sky by afternoon and we woke up to a sparkling white Boxing Day!

Actually we awoke to a noise, an unfamiliar noise; the scrape of the kids shoveling the sidewalk in front of our house! That is how long it has been since they had seen snow- they’re excited to shovel! We shoveled and played and sled. We got out to a friends’ house for brunch, admiring all the white fields and snow crusted pine trees along the way. We drove to a nearby little town for our annual watching of the Nutcracker. We enjoyed the ballet but playing on the snow piles in the parking lot was just as entertaining!

The next day we drove an hour to the small Memmingen airport for a quick trip to London. We navigated that tiny airport like pros, blowing through the short security and immigration lines. The kids unpackedtheir new Christmas Apple products and we waited. And waited. Until they announced the flight was cancelled. Our plane could not land due to snow on the runway and had diverted to Basel instead. We were to board buses to Basel and fly to London from there. Thankfully only a four hour bus trip. We were sort of hurried through the Basel airport, making our flight and ultimately just missing a day of our stay in London. Very grateful Santa brought some Apple products as Tori finished all her books before we left Germany.

London is and was fantastic. We enjoyed the Hampstead neighborhood, including a fun park and great bookstore. We ate British food that we remembered from Hong Kong days. The kids, growing older I suppose, pushed back after a couple museum days and requested a day at the Mall. Reluctantly, we went and it was great. The highlights: kids spending their own money and an afternoon spent watching a movie in English! A lovely holiday break that ended with us watching yet another movie: Trains, Planes and Automobiles. We laughed but it was still a little painful.