German Culture day

When we got home from our wonderful river cruise down the Danube, Karin's family was in town! While everyone was in town, my parents hosted a German culture day to teach all the kids about one of the countries we had just visited on our trip.  

We began with a traditional German dinner, my mom decorated the table to look like a german flag, and added a few souvenirs we had brought back from our German visit.

My mom had ordered a whole meal from Siegfried's Delicatessen, a traditional German restaurant located downtown.  Everything was delicious!

Bethy braided my hair into a bavarian braid while I enjoyed a stein of sparkling cider.

We had this gorgeous German chocolate cake for dessert!

After dinner we headed down to the craft room to learn a little about German culture, history, fairytales, and architecture.  Everyone got to make miniature half timber houses to help us all remember the iconic german architecture.

Our second stop was up in the living room to learn about German Christmas traditions.  My mom's christmas tree is always decorated with lots of German and Norwegian ornaments she has collected from her travels. So after we learned a little bit about how the Germans celebrate Christmas, all the kids got to decorate this adorable little christmas tree with some of my mom's traditional german ornaments.

I had the opportunity to tell the kids about the German Christmas tradition of kids leaving their shoes out on the porch on the eve of St. Nicholas' day and in the morning they are either filled with candy or coal, depending on if the kids have been naughty or nice.  So, all the kids lined their shoes up on the porch then headed back down to the craft room for our next activity. While the kiddos were busy, I got to fill all their shoes with goodies we had brought back from Germany!  It was so much fun playing St. Nicholas!

While I was playing St. Nicholas, the kids were making adorable Cuckoo clocks.  Jenny had put this fun craft together for everyone, we all had so much fun with it!

The kids had the hardest time not sneaking upstairs to check on their shoes while we were working on the cuckoo clocks.  They were super excited when we told them it was time to line up and go see if St. Nicholas had come while they were crafting!

We ended the night gathered around our lighted Christmas Pyramid.  As usual, this culture day was so much fun!  Thank you so much to everyone that made it possible!  I sure love my creative and culture loving family!