Christmas Eve Memories

We had a wonderful

Christmas with all of our children and grandchildren here this year. We

realize that we will not always be this lucky. And this causes us to cherish this busy,

and sometimes hectic season of our lives.

We hope that our friends and family all over the world had as great a Holiday as we did.

On Christmas Eve this year we had an English Dinner.....so yummy and fun.

After dinner we learned to sign "Silent Night" and then tried to sing it in German.

Our four toddlers were so cute in their pajamas!

This is Reagan, Sienna, Krew and Ty.

More Christmas fun!

This is some of the family playing Rook on Christmas Day at Kim and Erik's home after a wonderful Christmas Day turkey dinner.

This is our six older grandchildren on a outing to "Build a Bear".


When we went to spend a few days in Salt Lake City we stayed in the Marriott
with an ice skating rink just out the back door.

This is Matt and Ty getting ready to hit the ice, with a little assistance from Nana.

This is Helmut serving up pizza at the Pie Pizzeria.

We are worn out from all the fun! But truly I am already looking

forward to the next time we can all get together again.

Tis The Season

Our celebration has begun...........as always the first sign of Christmas is decorating the tree.

This year we decided to do something different and we put on just blue and white lights.

This did mean I had to leave off many of my favorite red santa ornaments.......didn't

really want a red, white and blue tree. It is quite pretty and dad is happy since his

favorite color is blue!

The dogs seem content to sleep near the tree no matter what color the lights are each year.

Thanksgiving Point

Even though we didn't get to have all of the family with us for Thanksgiving dinner this year we still had a wonderful month of November. Cairen and her girls came for two weeks and we had so much fun while they were here. One day we took the younger ones to the animal farm at Thanksgiving point. Ty was for sure the bravest at feeding the calves.

We had our first "Clara's Club" meeting at mother's clubhouse. This was, I hope the

begining of a girls organization for the Christiansen family. I really did appreciate

our girls coming.

McKyna spent the night while Cairen was here and pulled off a curley hair day!

Don't you wish you could get your hair to look like that?

Our Thanksgiving morning started off with the neighborhood "Gobble Walk". The plan is to

walk off some of those extra calories ahead of time.......not sure it worked?!

We got a new entertainment center to fit Helmut's big screen TV and as you can see he had

some expert help getting things set up. Actually Paul and Brian were very helpful and Seth even

contributed some muscle between his studying.

Thanksgiving Point - more pictures from our outing

This a picture of Meika taking a pony ride at the animal farm.
Krew is ready to get off!
This month was my parents 60th wedding anniversary. We had a wonderful 3 day

celebration........this is a picture of the family dinner on Saturday night. The talent show that

followed dinner was amazingly entertaining.

Happy 60th to mother and dad........what a cute couple!

oops.......guess I posted this picture twice...........too bad I'm not

skilled enough to take this one off!

Our Trip To Las Vegas & California - November 2008

We took a trip to California - to attend Brett's Missionary Farewell & to help gg and gp Ollech
move. We had a great time.......The bonus was that we got to see Cairen & Seth and their girl
and Ricky's Family. We sure wish that everyone lived closer.........but it was a treat to see
them all! The above is Meika being creative with the playdough.

Sienna is mommy's little helper.

Ricky's family in Visalia is doing well.....we were so surprised to see how much
Reagan has grown since last summer.

Helmut is working hard to help with the BIG MOVE!

Does this house look familar? Could be because this is where Helmut's mother

and step-father lived from abt 1968 to 1986. And now they are going back to

live on the farm by Ben & Shirley. Kind of like going home..........

This is the last of our Pictures from Europe!

It was so great to see Halina in Poland again. Here is a picture of our tranlator and transportation, Lukasz and Halina looking at the computer and discussing family history at Halina's house.

This is another picture taken at Halina's.

We cannot say enough about how much we enjoyed our time in the Berlin area! Once again

our dear friends, the Winklers did so much to help us enjoy our time there. We were

sorry that we didn't get to see Marie........maybe next time.

Our Family in Haunkenzell

This is Johann Weinzierl and his family. We met them in 2004 and enjoyed visiting with them again in 2006 and this year. Johann is a first cousin to grandma Ollech. Each time we go he and his family show a new and special family spot of interest!

German Bakeries

One of our favorite parts of going to Germany is eating goodies from the bakeries. They are

everywhere and so good! On my birthday I was treated to a beautiful cake made by

Susanna and Rainer's handsome son, Peter.

We had to take a picture of the beautiful cakes at the bakery where

Peter is training..........tempting, huh?

Here is Peter at the bakery. Doesn't he look like a pro?!

Denmark

Copenhagen , Denmark was really fun...........we especially enjoyed our time with

Bor. & Sis. Thomsen. Here we leaving church to go do some sight seeing. They hold

church in the Ballerup Train Station.

Here we are eating a sack lunch that Sis. Thomsen packed for us before entering the

Freiderekborg Castle.

After the castle and a fun custom tour they took us on of the area we went to their home. That
was very special........she treated us to a typical Danish lunch.........a declicious open-faced shrimp sandwich.

Our second day in Copenhagen we went in search of a couple family history spots. First I wanted to find the home where our ancestors lived when Niels Peter Christiansen Sr., my great-great-grandfather was born. We found the street, but couldn't really be sure which

building they lived in, because the house numbers have changed since the mid 1800's. This

building looked like the oldest on the street to me, so that is our best guess! Maybe next

time we go we can get better information on the history of this area.

This is the Lutheran church where he was christened! It is a famous church in

copenhagen........called the "Church of Our Savoir".

Here is what we saw in France.

We actually only spent a couple days in France, but what we saw was really interesting. We

visited two sights. One of them was the beaches of Normandie, the

American WW II Monuments and the Cemetery.

This is Omaha Beach, where thousands of American soliders died before and after the

famous landing!

This is the American Monument built
in of honor all those that gave their lives that day............do you know the

date of D-day?

This is the cemetery.......do you know
how many American boys are buried
here?







The other sight we visited in France
was la Mont St. Michel. This is an abbey originally built in 700 a.d. It was very interesting, but it had way too many steps for me!

Uncle Karl

While we were in Munich we saw Uncle Karl several times. We tried to get him to go out to dinner, but he didn't really want. So, we ended up bringing food back to the apartment for him. Even though he usually said that he wasn't hungry he always seemed to enjoy what we brought, especailly the deserts! He is moving very slowly now days and no doubt he is lonely - since most of the time he is alone in his apartment.

Our Munich Heroes the Schobers!!

This is dad in front of the flat that Susanne and Rainer let us use for several days while we were

in Munich. They drove us to our day trips from here and even let us borrow one their cars to drive to the Schonsee area. Sussanne was also very helpful with our search for more genealogy

informaton. We doubt if they realize how much we appreciate everything they did for us.

So, we are back after spending 3 weeks in Europe. As always, it is so nice to be home!

We will be adding pictures from our trip for the next fews days. This is a picture of the inside of one of the beer tents at the Octoberfest in Munich. We went to this our first day in Germany

with Rainer and Susanne. It was amazing! This tent holds about 6,000 people all sitting

like a bunch of bugs in a rug drinking beer and eating great German food. The festival attracts

about 6 million people each year. Crazy, huh?!

The Best Part of Our Trip was meeting Family!

We were really pleased to be able to find information on, locate and meet some of dad's family from his birth father, Helmut Streicher, on this trip to Germany. This is his brother Ralph with his wife Petra and their two daughter Theresa and Franziska. They are very nice people.

Helmut's Family in Germany

This a picture of Isabella and her husband, Werner.

Here is a picture of Helmut finally united with his brother Ralph and his sister Isabella

On Friday we said good-bye to our last puppy. The last one that we found a home for was our only male survivor. We called him Jr. because he reminded us so much of Max.
Most likely our "puppy days" our over! Even though we had fun with both bunches of puppies, the poopies weren't so fun. I'm sure that my laundry room will never be the same!
The people that bought Jr. were from Green River...................this is Linda and Jr. when she came to pick him up. It does give us some pleasure to know that he will fill an empty spot in the home of these very nice people. They had to have their 15 year -old Schnauzer put to sleep recently and their other dog has been so sad! She did call on Sunday to give us an update and assure us that he has adjusted well to his new home. We sure hope that all of the new puppy

owners love their new pets as much as we love our dogs.