Bonjour everyone and Happy New Year!!

We hope the holidays treated everyone well! We had a fairly quiet Christmas in Brussels. We got together with a few american friends we have made out here for Christmas dinner, which was really nice since we were all so far from home. Other than that we just relaxed and awaited the 26th and 27th, when our 5 holiday guests arrived! We were lucky to have our sister Jessie and four MU friends take their Christmas vacations out to visit and travel with us! It was a good thing we were all comfortable with eachother as 7 total in our apartment was quite a squeeze - but everything worked out great and we had a LOT of fun together. With almost two weeks to spend (except we only had Margaret for a week :( ) we were able to tour Brussels, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brugge, Dublin, Ghent, Namur, Dinant, and Barcelona - in that order!
We celebrated New Years together in Dublin - it was great to celebrate in a country that spoke english, served a lot of beer, and knows how to party! We had three full days in Dublin and even got to spend one day touring the countryside south of Dublin, including a 45 acre garden - which was lovely - even in January!
The following weekend we were able to head to Barcelona and see even more than we had in our first tour of the city!
All the days in between our international cities, we toured the major Belgian cities. Of course the country was in a cold spell during their visit (temps in the 30's with flurries), but the snow made for some great pictures and reason to sneak in the many pubs to warm up! And of course now that our visitors are gone... it is back in the 40's and sunny - go figure!
Our pictures can be viewed at:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=d3mrqfc.rrru82w&Uy=nzf2q9&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

Well, since we had a full two weeks of action, this past week has been really slow for us and we even spent this weekend in Brussels! It has been nice to catch our breath and relax for a weekend. But, we are realizing how quick our time is going and with only one month left we hope to get in a few more trips!
We hope this post finds everyone well and hope to hear from you soon!!
Happy New Year!
Jackie and Joe