A very merry Christmas...

Our Christmas holiday started in San Diego about 2 weeks prior to Christmas day. Matt was scheduled for a job conference and he was planning on getting the chance to interview with a couple of companies while we were there, unfortunately though, the companies he was scheduled to interview with ended up dropping out of the conference, so no luck there. That was a bummer, but on the bright side, my parents were visiting San Diego for my dad's work and we got the chance to spend some time, and share some meals with them. One especially notable meal was at Morton's Steakhouse (Matt's favorite), it was oh-so-good!

After a few days in San Diego we headed up to Redlands to spend the rest of our time with Matt's family. We had a few days at first with his mom and dad; a little later his sister flew out and the family was all together! We enjoyed last minute shopping, some awesome meals, HDTV, and just spending time with everyone!

On Christmas Eve we celebrated our Lord's birth at Matt's parents' church. Afterwards, Matt and I drove around town looking for local newspaper machines...our wedding announcement wound up in the paper that day and it surprisingly took some searching to find the 12 copies we were hoping to get! After our "tour of the town" we stopped off at Panera to pick up some bread and headed home to an awesome Christmas Eve dinner with the family!

After we finished dinner we moved to the living room to open some presents! It was so fun to watch everyone open their gifts, and we are so thankful for the gifts that we received. The next shot is me opening up a gift from Matt, he got me a teapot!

This was such a wonderful gift since I had been mentioning my desire to start a little teapot collection...everytime I talked about it though Matt would laugh and roll his eyes, so I figured it wasn't going to happen! I am afraid though that he will view my teapot collection as approval for him to start a Porsche collection, since everytime he mentions that, I laugh and roll my eyes!

We had a great breakfast on Christmas morning then spent the day gearing up for a little get together that Bill and Susanne were hosting. Friends stopped by all throughout the evening, we had such a nice time catching up with folks that we don't get to see often enough.

The day after Christmas was a long one! Both Matt and I woke up early to go on our runs, then we went out to breakfast with some of Matt's friends, after that it was off to a couple of stores and the post office. When we got back we had about two hours to pack, then it was off to LAX for our long trip home.

Our flights and drive home all went well and now we are trying to recover from jet lag and get back to life here in Germany. Our search for jobs still is not over, please keep us in your prayers as we continue to seek out a variety of opportunities.