Christmas in Leavenworth

Many years ago during a brief stint of family adventure, my father wanted to take the family of five on a vacation to Austria. We were going to fly military space available, a system where military cargo and transit planes allow enlisted personnel to occupy unused seats for free.

The system can work if you are a single traveler, patient, and not too picky on where you go, not so well for a family of five camping out in a parking lot of Andrews Air Force base waiting for five open seats to a hot destination. So after three days of waiting we returned home to the snickering of our neighbors.

To make up for the botched trip, the old man decided he would make up for the trip with a Christmas in Leavenworth, Washington. Leavenworth is the equivalent of a faux Bavarian village transplanted 3 hours outside Seattle, Washington. The entire city is very quaint, with Tudor houses, a maypole and many small shops serving Bavarian beer and Bratwurst. Have a look at the town's web cam.

On Christmas we were blessed with several feet of snowfall, thus completing the post-card worthy setting. However the coup de grâce was when Mandy and I showed up in our Christmas outfits/costumes we had purchased a few months earlier. With myself in Lederhosen and Mandy in her Dirndl, we got down to the cheesiest Christmas ever. It was a crowded house and came off a bit like the twelve days of Christmas: Grandma & Grandpa, my Brother and his wife and 9 month old baby, one Tabby cat, Chocolate lab and a long haired Chiwawa.