Bon Voyage

Hi All,

Its so hard to believe that we leave for our European Adventure tomorrow.

We have had a fabulous Christmas in Cleveland with Tom's family.  It has been a huge contrast to our quiet small Idaho Christmas celebrations!  The action and events here have been non-stop.  This link is to an album of pictures capturing Christmas Day.  Christmas with the Brandt Family 2012.

We are packed and ready to go.  We will spend New Year's Eve at Tom's brother Chris's home and we head to the airport tomorrow afternoon.  We are each equipped with one huge duffle bag, one carry-on roller bag and a backpack.  The duffle bags are over weight and we will have to pay extra, but we think we have included everything we will need!  Ha!

Our next post will be from our flat in London!

Liz & Tom

Christmas Eve in Cleveland Hts.

It’s Christmas Eve in Cleveland Hts., Ohio.  The stockings aren’t hung yet but lots of presents have been wrapped and are ready to go.  Carolyn has joined us from Washington, D.C. and Christian has joined us from outside of NYC.  We are all at my mother’s house, making the final preparations for Christmas.  Christian is cooking us dinner from his new Two Fat Ladies cookbook – Cawl (Welsh Lamb Stew) and Stuffed Peppers.  Tonight, we will celebrate Christmas Eve at Hope Lutheran Church, the church where Liz and I were married and where Christian and Carolyn were baptized.  Because the service at Hope starts at 6:30, some of us will be walking to the Methodist church a few blocks from home for midnight service.  (You’ve got to be in church at midnight, singing Silent Night with candles!)

Tomorrow will be an all-day affair!  Family members will be coming and going as they make time for extended families.  We’ll be waking up (not too early, hopefully) to home-made cinnamon rolls and Christmas presents.  The first sibling family should arrive at about 11:00 with more to follow.  Eventually, there will be roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for 25 (yes, that’s right, 25!) at 3:00. followed by more presents and festivities.

But the fun doesn’t end there!  Dec. 26 is my brother Chris’s birthday.  The crew will return for more food and festivities.  But eventually, everyone will go back to their homes, including Carolyn to D.C. and Christian to NYC.  Then the reality will hit us that we have less than a week to get everything packed up or packed away for the next grand adventure – Europe!  More on that later...

Tom

Fresh Take on the Holidays!

The bomber is Elliot, Tom's youngest nephew!

Christmas feels very different this year than in the recent past!  Usually, Tom and I are so busy during December its hard to catch our breath.  At work, I usually have had end of the semester grading, and administrative jobs.  Tom also is usually gearing up for the end of his semester at MHS.  We both sing in the Palouse Choral Society and have rehearsals and a Christmas Concert.  Tom often sings in a small caroling group from PCS. We have bell choir and singing choir at church.  

This year we don't have any of those things!  No grading.  No end of the semester crunch.  No PCS rehearsals and concerts. No church obligations.  Tom has bell choir concerts, but I don't even have those as I have been a utility substitute for them this fall but haven't had assigned bells.  

Its weird in many ways to have so few obligations.  I have to say I miss many of our activities -- especially those at church.  But on the other hand its delightful to just enjoy all the hoopla around us and to be able to spend time together enjoying our family.

Last week I helped make edible ornaments for birds and squirrels with Tom's mom and sister and folks from their church.  Each year they make these ornaments and then hang them on a tree near the grave of Rev. Schawn, the first Lutheran pastor in the US to bring a Christmas tree inside the church sanctuary.   The link is to pics of last year's efforts.  The grave site is in Lake View Cemetery, a historic cemetery (president Garfield and John D. Rockefeller are buried there) at which Tom's sister Marilyn is the chief operating officer.  We hung the ornaments on Saturday while the birds and squirrels swooped around us waiting for us to get out of the way so they could enjoy their treats!

This past Sunday we attended the annual Danish Christmas Party sponsored by the Danish Brotherhood in Cleveland.  Tom's family has attended this event for decades!  When we were first married and lived in Cleveland, we attended every year.  Back then, the music was provided by Fred Ziwich and his International Sound Machine.  At the time he was a guy in his 30's with a button box a couple of other instruments and a synthesizer that played accompaniments and rhythm.  Tom's family really got a kick out of Fred and we all looked forward to the traditional Danish music and polkas.  Flash forward 27 years....who knew ... the entertainment at the 2012 Danish Christmas Party was ... Fred Ziwich and his International Sound Machine!  Little about the party had changed except that some of the old-timers are now gone, lots of new kids are attending and Fred has a Grammy nomination for his polka recordings.  We enjoyed dancing, singing carols in Danish and English around the Christmas tree and socializing.

After the Danish party we went to the Western Reserve Chorale concert.  Tom's brother Chris sings in this group.  We enjoyed a performance of Britton's "Ceremony of Carols" and a selection of other holiday music.  The harp with the Britton was wonderful!

Friday night we will decorate Tom's mom's Christmas tree.  This will entail more ornaments and decorations than any one person rightfully should have.  Tom's mom's Christmas tree is like no tree you have ever seen!    For many years, his mom and dad would cut down a 15 foot tree at his grandfather's home, cut off the top and wedge the remaining tree between the 10 ft. ceiling and floor in the living room.  The effect was of the tree growing through the living room ceiling.  They did this, in part,  because the trees at his grandpa's, which were planted for the purpose of providing holiday trees, had grown so much that there were no small trees left.   In addition, however, Tom's mom needed a tree with big branches and lots of open space so there would be plenty of room to hang the many ornaments.  Ornaments were hung on the Brandt tree on every single branch starting from the inside of the tree and working out!  The whole thing was such a production that the tree often stayed up until Easter or later.  With religious watering, it frequently sprouted new growth at the ends of branches.

In more recent years, Tom's mom has had to scale back a bit.  The supply of trees at grandpa's house was finally exhausted, the kids all moved on to their own homes and Tom's dad's Parkinson disease prevented him from erecting a mammoth tree. So, the tree is more typical, a nine-footer from a local tree lot.  But all the ornaments are still here and I know we will be looking for places to hang as many of them as possible.  This tree will have more ornaments on it than any one, except a Brandt, would believe possible!  And I know that the decorating will be accompanied by everybody singing along with the kitchiest recorded Christmas music you can imagine.  Think Alvin and the Chipmunks singing "Christmas Don't be Late,"  and really hokey recordings of not very good pop carols like "Feliz Navidad" and "Mamacita, Donde es Santa Claus"

Liz

Getting Ready

Tom and me with our kids in DC this past fall.

Hi Everyone -- Welcome to our blog!. We plan to share these posts with friends at Weight Watchers, our friends and co-workers, our family and with any other folks who care to follow our travels.

Its hard to believe that we have been away from our home in Idaho for almost five months and that in one short month we leave for Europe.  These past five months have been productive and rewarding for both of us.  Tom is in the final stages of his online classes.  He has been busily fixing things for his mom and others in his family.  My work on my community property book has progressed well and I am about to complete my first draft for publication.  We both have enjoyed spending time with family and friends in Cleveland.

In addition to work, family and friends, these past months have also been taken up with some fun activities and travel.  Tom was interested in visiting some civil war history sites, so in September we took ten days and traveled and camped in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.  We visited Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper's Ferry, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Menocacy.  We camped in Shenandoah National Park also.  It was a lovely trip and we both got so interested in the history that we read James McPherson's wonderful two volume tome -- Battle Cry of Freedom!

At the end of October, we went to Florida to visit my parents.  We stayed with them at a lovely little resort hotel just north of Daytona Beach and enjoyed swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.  We also had the opportunity while there to visit my Dad's cousin and learn a bit more of his family history.  Then we traveled  to my parent's home in Venice FL and enjoyed a couple of lazy days of visiting.

In addition to these two longer trips we have made several shorter trips to Erie to visit my sister, to Washington DC to visit the kids, to Bowling Green to catch up with my friend and Idaho colleague Maureen, and to Penn State to see a play that was stage managed by one of my nephews.

This fall we also have been ringing handbells and curling.  Tom's sister Mazie, brother Chris, and nephew Eric, ring with a very good community bell choir -- the River Valley Ringers.  Tom has been subbing on the low bells and I have been a utility player!  The choir's concerts this fall will feature the "Brandt Bass Section!"  We also have taken the opportunity to curl at the Mayfield Curling Club on "real curling ice."  I also found a great WeightWatchers meeting in Shaker Heights and have been attending regularly.

Having said all of that, we are definitely ready to be on our own and to move on to the next stage of our sabbatical adventure.  We are both beginning to feel slightly antsy living at Tom's Mom's house.  We have worked hard to blend into her life (although I know we have disrupted it in a major way).  I suspect she will miss the companionship and activity but will also breathe a sigh of relief when she does not have the two of us in her hair!  We also are looking forward to the time together.  We have been working hard not to plan anything for the London portion of our trip, preferring instead to wake up each day and figure it out as we go!

We are busily making our reservations and getting all of our last minute things.  We have our round trip tickets, a flat in Greenwich in London for the first three months, an unlocked phone that will work in all the countries we are visiting, our Eurail Passes for the Spain and France portions of our travels, and reservations for our bike trip.  We are getting our packs outfitted for our walk on the Camino.  We're scoping out self catering places in Ireland and logistics for the rest of our spring travels!

Liz