Schemeit be here, schemeit be there...: Guten Rutsch

Happy New Year! We are back in Canada. We've been back for a couple of weeks, busy organizing and preparing and baking for Christmas. Now we've managed to slide nicely into the new year. I love the German saying you use on New Year's Eve. Guten Rutsch. Literally translated it means "Have a good slide!" As in, have a good slide into the New Year. I like the image it evokes. Smooth transition. Though really, why wouldn't you have a smooth transition...it's just one day going into the other just like any other day. But nevertheless it's a cool expression. So we took it literally and slid well into the New Year. Cathy and Greg came over for the evening since neither of us had any other plans. We raided our fridge and came up with enough delectable treats to get us through the evening. We traded stories and pictures of our trip to Germany. (Cathy had been there for 5 days at the end of November doing some field work for her job. You can read about it here. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/germanys-christmas-markets-a-place-where-holiday-shopping-definitely-isnt-a-chore/article6374042/) And at midnight when our German neighbour down the street blew off some firecrackers into the quiet night, we headed across the street where another neighbour had spent the day before building a sliding track with all the snow we got. And we had a good slide into the quiet night.