Festive Markthal....

The day after Christmas, Jimmy, Veronica and I went to Rotterdam to see the Markthal decorated for the holidays.

It was very festive!

A White Family Christmas...

Despite no mantel, Ashlynn figured out how to hang up our stockings by the fireplace. 

On Christmas Eve, we had dinner at Carlin and Kent’s. As you can see, the girls’ nut roll had some problems, but it was still yummy as was everything that Carlin made.

We all agreed that our tree looked better in our new house.

On Christmas morning, the Vegan Princesses made cinnamon rolls.

Breda Winter Wonderland...

Breda was quite a lovely city with lots of pretty Christmas lights.

The market was rather small, but we didn’t mind as that allowed us to wander the town more and find a good vegetarian restaurant on our own and a bar selling very affordable gluhwein. 

The best part, however, was when we came across this group making Christmas videos for charity. Since I couldn’t photograph us while we were up on the small platform, I took this photo of strangers to show the contraption used for filming our 360° video.

Now that Jimmy and I have free train travel on weekends, I can definitely see going back to Breda to explore it further.

Breda Dollhouse Museum...

That Saturday we headed to Breda for their Winter Wonderland. We’d never been to Breda before, so I did some quick research of what there is to see and was thrilled when I came across this museum. The €3.50 entrance fee even included a coffee, tea or shot of a local liqueur served while watching the introductory video.  

We were pleasantly surprised when we learned that the majority of the collection was donated by one family, and much of it was handmade by the mother. Here is King Willem Alexander and Queen Maxima on the day of his coronation.

The attention to detail was incredible!

While most of the collection was individual rooms, here’s one of the complete houses.

I especially loved this hat store.

Downstairs was an entire village built by an artist that included sweet features such as this special bike for selling milk and eggs.  

The museum was part of the complex making up the Begijnhof Breda, which was built in 1535 to house pious Catholic women. 

While it’s been sometime since Jimmy worked on or the girls played with our dollhouse, it is prominently displayed in our new house.

Our 12th Anniversary Dinner...

Once again we were exactly one month late to celebrate our anniversary in Holland at La Laterna, the restaurant that we ate on our first night in November 2005. It was hard to believe that this time we were celebrating our 12th anniversary. And as part of our tradition, we stopped by the passageway next to the interior design shop on Keizerstraat to see the Christmas animatronics and Jimmy put a coin in to make it snow soap bubbles.

 It was a beautiful night in The Hague.

We finished the evening with a drink at Mingle Mush, where the girls posed for this classy photo.

Our Mixed Up Holidays...

Veronica looked lovely at the ball for all the industrial placement kids at GSK in early December. 

We were thrilled that not only did she come home for the holidays, but she arranged to work from home so she could stay from December 19 until January 7. Ashlynn was still in school when she arrived, so Veronica and I ventured into Leiden on our own to go to the floating Christmas market.

We ran past this cute historic house at the Sinterklaas Hash earlier in the month and I took this photo on my phone.

Two and a half weeks later, I brought Veronica there so she could take some shots and was surprised to see how many more lights and inflatables had been added. 

It undoubtedly had the most Christmas decorations of any house we’d ever encountered in Holland.

That same night was the final night of Hanukkah; Jimmy made vegan latkes and I made vegan kugel.

Southampton Christmas Market...

Downtown Southampton had changed since I had been there three years before with Veronica. Next to the remaining bit of the medieval city wall, a new giant entertainment center opened with a big movie theater and cuisine from around the world—we chose Caribbean.

There was a small Christmas market...

...that featured Santa’s flying sled.

It was quite a sight to see Santa waving to the crowds below.

For some more holiday merriment, we went to an adult panto: Sleeping with Beauty. We werent’t quite sure what to expect as we’d only ever been to family pantos. The website’s warning that the show wasn’t for those easily offended was definitely an understatement as it was extremely raunchy, but also very funny with excellent singing and acting. Ashlynn was by far the youngest there.

She was thrilled when we happened upon Stackss, a pancake house that had a separate vegan menu. We liked it so much that one dinner just wasn’t enough, so we went back for breakfast the next morning.