Hello there!

Wow - look at me getting all caught up with our photo travel log this week! I am sure everyone is too busy this week with the holidays and all, but I had to get caught up before it got out of control! Plus, Joe is super busy with work this week, which has left me with a lot of time on my hands.
Pretty much right after we returned from Barcelona, Uncle Scott and Aunt Mary arrived in Brussels for a visit. We spent one day in Brussels touring the Christmas Markets and getting caught up - which was so nice. Then, we rented a car and headed to the wine country of France. We checked out the Burgundy and Champagne regions. Needless to say we had great fun with amazing food, wine, and great company. Having known very little about wine, this was a great opportunity to learn from the French how it's done. The wine tours were similar to the beer tours we are accustomed to, living in Milwaukee and all, oh yeah... except some of them only spoke french! We made it through the barrier and had a great time getting such great hospitality from the wineries and managed to get a lot less intimidated by those french wine labels. We started our tour in the Burgundy wine region, which is southeast of Paris, and finished off the tour in the Champagne region. So, not only did we learn about wine, we learned about the champagne process as well. And I think the most amazing part of the whole week was that none of us ever got a headache or hangover! I think that is attributed to all the cheese and gourmet meals we devoured along the way! You can check out the photos at the following link:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=d3mrqfc.18gk2cmw&Uy=d0069t&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

Well, with the holidays practically here, we are thinking of all of you a lot. We will have our first Christmas without our families, which will be strange, but we only have to make it until the day after, since Jessie arrives in Brussels on Monday and four other friends arrive on Tuesday to celebrate the New Years holiday with us in western Europe! We are really looking forward to it all!
We wish you all a wonderful holiday season full of health, happiness, and lots of love!
Jackie and Joe