It’s day 21 and we’re going back somewhere we haven’t been for a while.

After Christmas and to ring in the New Year, we headed to Belgium. My mom had not been back there since our wedding so it went without question that Liz’s family wanted to enjoy a bit of time together with her as well.

… We drove through the northern French city of Long and even saw Long Castle, before crossing the border into the country of French Fries & fine chocolate!

Is this first Christmas Memory post you’re seeing?
You can get caught up by starting back on day 1 to understand this year’s theme

Monschau, Germany

Before getting to New Year’s celebrations, we headed to a spot that we always love coming back to, when we’re in the vicinity and time allows: Monschau, Germany. It’s the teeny-tiniest of stereotypical German villages located just over Belgium’s eastern border, within an hour’s drive of Liège.

I have a memory of visiting its Christmas market – years ago and it’s just an incredible place to go for an afternoon stroll. It was my mom’s first time back since the early 1990s, when she & my dad visited. She enjoyed re-creating that memory so-to-speak, but this time with her daughter-in-Love and 3 of her grandkids.

New Year’s Day

On New Year’s Day, Liz’s aunt hosted the family for dinner: a mountain of food and a very long table, for a small crowd of people (too many to get in a single, living-room photo). Mom was very glad to reconnect with Liz’s two aunts… Stella & Enza, whom she’d gotten to know in the lead up to our wedding (just a few years ago!)

It had been many, many years since the last time Mom had been in these two places… Christmas-time was a great opportunity to renew the old memories and make new ones.

Thank you sharing this memory and…