December flew by really fast this year. It's my kids' favorite time of the year & I love the magic associated with the Christmas season. Where we are in Germany, we don't get very much snow, but this year we have been blessed with a lot of fun snow storms. My kids have loved playing in the snow, even if it's just a few inches deep.
We have a really steep driveway, so every time it snows, the whole neighborhood comes over to sled down our driveway. It cracks me up.
We try to build snowmen with the little snow we get. The kids love it.
I was a little sad that Germany cancelled all their Christmas markets this year due to COVID-19. But the bakeries in town still managed to make some pretty festive & amazing things. I love going to the bakery & just ordering random things not knowing what they are. We all love eating & trying new things. I especially loved the cute little reindeer guy we found. He was just chocolate covered bread, but he was adorable.
I also loved the chocolate covered banana angel food cakes. Those were AMAZING.
Cadence had a busy December. She found out in December that she got accepted to 3 different colleges: BYU-Idaho, Neumont Technical College (with a $20,000 scholarship), & SVU (with a $5,000 scholarship). She's still waiting to hear back from BYU-Provo, MIT, & BYU-HI, which should happen in February before making a decision, but it's nice to know that she has some options.
She also headed up a HUGE service project for the Ramstein/Kaiserslautern area. She got in contact with a refugee center here & found out that there are over 130 children needing school supplies & craft activities to do while in school since they all are required to be taught right there in the camp. She got word out all over the area & picked up supplies from people's homes, had things delivered to our house, & waited in front of stores on base several times to collect supplies. She collected a TON of supplies for the center & will be delivering them next week. I'm proud of her for working hard to organize this on her own. It shows great leadership quality & will help her in the future as she becomes an adult (next month).
My friend, Nancy gave Craiger one of his birthday presents (Feb. 28) early this year. She got him a year subscription to a space box that comes every 3 months. Inside is a book with space facts in it, & lots of fun space related things. This box was all about the moon. He got a poster of the moon, a globe with all the seas, lava rocks, mountain ranges, etc. of the moon on it, an Apollo 11 patch, moon shaped sticky notes, & a lunar journal. He was in HEAVEN & can't wait for his next box.
For the whole month of December I organized a COVID friendly activity for both my church congregation & for Trek's squadron. I called it "secret elves" & it was basically a big game of ding dong ditch. I assigned each person participating another person/family for each week leading up to Christmas. There were 3 weeks so we were assigned 3 families from church & 3 families from Trek's work. Each week, we'd drop off a surprise at their door, ring the doorbell, & run away hoping to not get caught. The kids LOVED this. They loved trying not to get caught & they LOVED chasing down the people who dropped things off for us. It made being on quarantine a lot more exciting.
We received some really amazing things. We got several games to play as a family, & a lot of wonderful treats. We've been playing our new games all month & heaven knows we've eaten every treat entering our home. YUM.
We also found out this month that Trek was selected as the Information Dominance Outstanding Cyberspace Field Grade Officer of the Year for the United States Air Force.
This is an incredible opportunity & shows how amazing my sweet husband really is. We always say he's the best, but he really truly is the best of the best in his field for the ENTIRE Air Force for the year 2020.
We are SO proud of him & the things he has accomplished.
