Halle had her first rice cereal tonight. She loved it. Everytime we took the spoon to dip some more out of the bowl, she huffed and puffed to bring it back to her mouth.
The French countryside was absolutely beautiful. We passed by many little villages which all had a church at the center of each one.
the Arch de Triumph on Champs de Elyesse (one of the most expensive streets in the world). 
Here is the street again with beautiful blue lights on the trees. All of Paris was decorated in blue lights for Christmas and New Years.
the Eiffel Tower!!!! It was soooo cold.
We ate at a persian restaurant for lunch one day with curry, chick peas, and chicken. It was really great! There was tons of it too.
For one whole day we traveled to Versailles, France and visited the famous palace of King Louis the 14-16th. We were still not able to see all of the palace grounds. It took 50 years to build this palace at 10,000 workers a day. It is one of the most luxurious palaces of the day. Here is a picture of the chapel inside palace Versailles. 
The famous Hall of Mirrors of the palace
the gardens of the palace...wow!
HALLE HAS FOUND HER FEET!!!!
One night Doug took us to a go cart joint where the carts top out at 60 mph. Doug had broke a few of his ribs earlier this year while driving one of these and running into the wall. But it was really fun to watch Doug, Dan, Mike and Joy race. 
Here is a picture of us at the Sacre de Courre, a church on top of a hill overlooking the whole city of Paris.
the stairs that take you to the church...9 flights of 25 stairs each...yikes!
But wow...was it worth it. Here we are at the top looking over all of Paris.
Here we are at the famous Moulin Rouge. It was definitely a rougher part of town.
You have to pay to use the bathroom here in Europe! 
my ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL baby girl. 
Here is grandma and Halle at the Museum de Louvre. A famous museum with many artifacts like Statue of Venus, Mona Lisa, Picasso paintings, egyptian artifacts and much much more.
Halle and I viewing the oh-so popular, eye following Mona Lisa.
one of the many beautiful ceilings in the museum.
The Eiffel was lit up blue just for the holidays and every hour on the hour went off with sparklers.
A long trip in Paris wore out Dan and Halle.
I had forgot to tell you that we went to this adorable little bakery when we got into town. They all types of freshly made bread. It was delicious. Europeans are huge on bread and cheese.
On Christmas day we stayed at home and took a hike through the forest behind the Friesen house. This is evidently a big ritual thing to do here. There were many families walking through the forest as well.
We stubled upon a quaint German cottage.
This is Grandma and Grandpa Friesen's neighborhood. These are brand new homes.
This is the Friesen home. It is beautiful and very comfortable and homey inside.
We started out our journey to Landstuhl, Germany on Tuesday December 23rd at 5:00pm. Halle did such a great job the whole day and through the plane flight. She loved to look out the window as we were leaving. The flight was 8 1/2 hours long. Halle ended up sleeping and eating the whole time. Dan and I could not sleep at all. We watched tons of movies and played lots of games. We arrived in Germany at 8:30am there time. As we felt that our day should be ending, it was actually just beginning. Of course it has been so wonderful to see Dan's family. His mother, father, brother, and brother's girlfriend all were there at the gait waiting for us to arrive. They COULD NOT wait to see Halle. She was swept from my arms immediately and hugged and kissed all over by grandma Friesen. We then packed our 7 bags into an eight passenger van and headed to Landstuhl on the autobann.
We opened presents that Christmas Eve evening. It was wonderful! Halle was so sweet, she seemed to definitely be more interested in eating the wrapping paper than playing with all her presents.
Halle got to finally meet Sally in person. Sally is a puppet that Grandma Friesen got for her to talk to her over video chat. 
Dan and Halle could not stay awake the day we arrived. Dan kept informing me prior to taking this trip how important it was to stay awake that whole day. Poor thing he couldn't do it. He was sooo tired!!!
Halle got a hat from Uncle Mike from Belgium that says Merry Christmas in dutch.
It was truly a wonderful Christmas Eve!
It was an AWESOME weekend. Daddy and my step mom, Amanda came up from Statesboro and spent the weekend with us.. Daddy and Dan of course played the wi all night! Daddy and Amanda are so sweet...they got Dan some really awesome golf clubs and took me out shopping Saturday for our Christmas presents. We are so thankful. Amanda of course got some awesome shots of Halle while she was here with her Christmas bear from Grandma and Grandpa. They got to stay for the Four Points Christmas production on Sunday. We love getting to spend time with them and I'm sure they just love spending time with Halle!!! 
After a long day of shopping she was so tired!
The Four Points Production went so great!!! Four Points Band rocked the house with many Christmas songs while the story of Jesus' birth was narrated throughout, the preschool led us in some songs with motions to go along with, the elementary gave us a production of a Christmas alphabet, and Brent led us in Communion to conclude. It went really great and we had an awesome turn out...just over 100. 
The preschool could have been my favorite part...so cute!
