A Memorable Christmas

 Every family has their own Christmas traditions.  And if they are fortunate enough to be able to travel together, their own travel traditions.  Every family has their own Christmas memories.  And if they are fortunate enough to be able to travel together, their own travel memories.

As the year comes to a close and my family is once again blessed to spend the holidays together, I can't help but reflect on our own Christmas traditions and memories. And because this is a travel blog, aptly named "Incredible Memories", to combine such things with travel memories and traditions is a double blessing.

This post is a walk down memory lane to the Christmas my daughter got engaged...in Germany at Christmas time. A precious time of family togetherness and welcoming our wonderful son-in-law into the fold.  He was already completely enamored with our daughter, and we didn't want to scare him off with our craziness so we opted to wow him with a German Christmas and introduce him to our family style Christmas vacation!

Walking is always a part of our family vacation!  But of course we have to be well nourished to do so and as partaking of the local cuisine is another very important travel tradition, we stopped at a konditerei for some coffee and kuchen before we began our trek around the village.

We don't just walk in the day and were rewarded with this beautiful sunset on our evening walk!

Christmas in Germany just isn't Christmas if you don't visit a Christmas market.  Being overachievers, we visited not one but two.  And in that same "overachiever" vein, we also visited two countries as we  drove to Innsbruck, Austria to experience at Austrian Christmas market as well.

The Garmich Christmas market was in the evening and the lights were magical.  

On Christmas Eve, our family separated to accomodate our different interests and abilities.  And in keeping with tradition,  I took half of the children on a safe, beautiful sightseeing expedition..in this case the Zugspitze...

while my husband went off on a risky adventure with the others..in this case, skiing in the icy Alps of Austria because the snow was so bad on the German side.  In keeping with tradition, they came home with a hair raising tale, but also in keeping with tradition, they did come home safely!!

Everyone dreams of a White Christmas and we were not disappointed!!  It started snowing Christmas evening and by the next morning we woke to a Winter Wonderland!

*Notice my husband out there with them engaging in risky behavior of snowball fights while I'm safely warm indoors with my camera! lol

And speaking of my camera, I'm ALL about the photos on our vacations.  And my family is pretty good about obliging me.  A definite tradition is a "rock star" pose. 

And because its always about the memories, this photo is the one that is framed in my living room to always remind me of this trip. It captures my family perfectly!!