From the bottom of my heart, I truly wish all of my friends, family, readers, lurkers, and casual-stumblers-upon-my-websiters a VERY VERY BLESSED AND HAPPY CHRISTMAS !

Just for the record, I thought I’d share 5 of my best Christmas-season tips:

1. Everything is a LOT more fun with a Santa hat on (for the life of me, I could NOT get Soenke to wear one today to fly his passengers to London! Scrooge!) Wear it on the bus, to work, to the mall. Everyone smiles at you, and you feel like you’re having 50% more fun than the rest of the population. My top Santa-hat experience was a few years ago, driving home from the Christmas tree lot in my tiny little convertible, top down (the car’s, not MINE), Christmas tree sticking way up out of the car, Santa hat and supermodel sunglasses on. About 500 of my fellow Californians honked and waved, and somehow I knew at that moment that Christmas trees and convertibles were what life was all about.

2. If you have weird relatives that you have to see at Christmas, you can both help the time pass more swiftly AND be the life of the party by whipping up a nice batch of German-style Gluehwein (kind of like hot mulled wine, full of sugar and cinnamon). I have my friend Marnie to thank for this super good idea (the spiking your relatives part… I thought up the Gluehwein part).

3. If you’re too lazy/busy/cheap to get a Christmas tree, then at least wrap a strand of Christmas lights around the nearest houseplant or pet to ensure your home has the minimum standard of festiveness. Although, as I learned in college, better to avoid wrapping electrical things around cactus.

4. Always, I say ALWAYS try to bring the Christmas-dinner-hostess a nice little hostess appreciation gift (poinsettia [Weihnachtstern?], bottle of wine, chocolates, etc) in order to insure future reinvitations. It’s a heck of a lot of work to make Christmas dinner, which is why I love invitations. But be careful if you live in Germany, it may be “Gruenkohl” year (mushy kohl stuff with hot mustard and various very-scary pig items - apparently very special at Christmastime but there IS a reason why it hasn’t caught on outside of Germany, I can assure you).

5. If Santa didn’t bring you that special item that you’ve been a-yearnin’ for, that’s what after-Christmas sales are for, honey. In America, you can blast right out on the 26th, get the thing giftwrapped, rush back home and still pretend Santa got it right. (In Germany there is some weird “3-day Christmas” program where you have to wait until the 27th for anything to open again, unless that super special gift item can be bought at the local Shell station).

Back soon with the captivating second-half of our Middle-East adventure: dolphins in Oman… magic carpets in Ras el Khaimah… Chili’s and the Nutcracker in Dubai…

HO HO HO!

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Our tree with it’s wildly oversized Angel topper :

Baby Sophie on the 11th of December - this is her profile, and she’s trying to get her thumb in her mouth:

TO ANNOUNCE THAT IT’S A GIRL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crawfords everywhere are rejoicing as we finally add some PINK to the family (my brother has 4 darling boys, but no girls…). This is the first baby in Soenke’s family, so they are happy either way, but I think a girl was a happy surprise for them too !

I, of course, am planning a sparkly pink nursery, pink AMERICAN passport (heh heh), pink baby supermodel sunglasses, pink diapers, and a chic pink stroller….just for starters!

And now back to your regularly-scheduled travel program…