Merry Christmas!

Tom and I had a very good Christmas, but are wishing we could have been home with family. We are of course, very thankful that we are able to spend the holidays with each other though. On Christmas Eve we made cranberry bread and a lasagne and bread sticks for dinner (traditional for the Bryants :) ), and I also made a pasta salad to take over to a friend's get together the next day. We also went to midnight Mass, which was suprisingly not too crowded. Our parish started doing two vigil Masses, so I think a lot more people went to those rather than the midnight Mass. Christmas morning we slept in (we're enjoying it while we can!!) and opened presents. We also had some cranberry bread and coffee for breakfast, mmm :). We watched one of the movies Tom gave me (Wall-E, it's a very cute and funny Pixar movie), and then went to the dining facility on base to celebrate with Tom's boss and some co-workers. They served a really great dinner, and it was nice to spend some time with everyone. After that, we went over to our friend's place and had another dinner with all of our friends. It is so difficult for all of us being away from family especially during Christmas, and we have a least one friend who wasn't able to be with her husband, but being with good friends helps. There was a lot of good food, and we also brought a feuerzangenbowle. It's a traditional German thing, where you basically make spiced wine, and then pour brandy or rum over a suger cone that sits above the bowl of wine. You light the siger cone on fire, and then the sugar and rum drip down into the wine. Tasty! Tom had a lot of fun putting it together, and our friends got a kick out of it.

Christmas is almost here!

A couple weekends ago my friend Mariko and I went to look at Christmas trees, and I was going to hold off until Tom got here to get one, but they didn't have very many and I was worried about the selection being awful by the time he got home. So...I picked one out, and once I got it home I realized how huge it was! We had talked about getting a smaller one, that was no taller than Tom. I had to cut a little more than a foot off the top of it just to stand it up! And I had to rearrange the dining room too. I think next Christmas we'll pick out the tree together - Tom has much better perspective than me :). So, here's a few pictures of us decorating it. We actually had to move all the ornaments off the bottom half of the tree because Jaeger was being an imp and knocking them all off!

I also posted a belly picture, I'm about 26 weeks right now. We had an appointment on Tuesday, and everything checked out just fine! It's really neat to hear Julia's heartbeat every visit. Tom and I were watching a National Geographic show on how babies develop in the womb, and they said that sometimes you can hear the baby's heartbeat through the skin. Last night Tom tried doing that, but he couldn't hear her. I think she punched his head though, and he said he could hear her moving around, and it sounded like when you're underwater in a pool moving around. I thought that was so cool!! It's really nice having Tom home, he's been able to feel Julia move around every day now. I was also really sick yesterday, so it was nice to have him here to take care of me :).