NEW YEARS EVE PARTY

                         Our fifth annual new years eve party started off great, with some cocktails, hors d'oeuvre, fresh salsa, guacamole and tortilla chips. Also, for the first time we had a 4 course gourmet sit down dinner, everybody seemed to enjoy.

Menu

*

Maryland Crab Cakes

fire roasted pepper and lobster sauce

Montricher Salad

with cucumber, hearts of palm and beets

Fillet Mignon and Scampi

port wine sauce and garlic butter

julienne carrots in beet juice

spinach soufflé

swiss gratin potatoes

Personalized Coup Monte Carlo

vanilla ice cream

fresh berries with fruit sauce and

Grand Marnier

Main course

Fresh baked Swiss Zopf

Preparing the dessert

Final product

Donna and Windy enjoying the coup

                       The first 2 hours after dinner where full of fun and laughter. Soon after, our entertainment directors lost control of the party, due to tremendous alcohol consumption. Lets face it, the WII dancing challenge is fun until everybody has had their turn, but after 2 hours it started to get pretty boring.

Instructions from Eric

Full action dancing challenge

                        So we decided to play a card game, but it took a while to relocate to our playing table down stairs, so some people started to play pool and others gave darts a try. When we finally settled down to play cards it was too much of a challenge. We gave up and played darts for a while but soon we drifted back to the good old dancing challenge to 3:30 in the morning. I guess, I was wrong about the boring part!

Trying to get a card game together

 

                        In the mean time we enjoyed the midnight champagne toast and snack of a variety of canapés.

Midnight Hors d`oeuvre

New Year Toast

Last traditional picture of the old Year

Starting the New Year

Everybody had a great time all night

Eric, Joe and Sara

Donna and Nitro

Gina

Brian

Windy

Karla

Windy and Myself

Observing the dancers

Daniel, Gina and Nitro

Brian and Windy in conversation over parenthood

Overall a great success.

FINAL MONTHS OF 2010 (Part 2)

                       Next on our agenda was Thanksgiving. Donna and I where invited to spend thanksgiving with Windy and Brian and we gladly accepted, for once I did not have to cook.
                       I am not very critical about other peoples cooking and pleased very easily, but I was incredibly surprised with the feast Windy served us. Either I trained her very well or she gained all this experience cooking for three men every day. The food was cooked to perfection and nicely presented. Well, maybe the Turkey could be carved a little thinner, instead of half pound chunks. (Windy let Brian carve the turkey!)

Brian, the master turkey carver

Check out this spread

Great food

A real thanksgiving plate

Indulging the dessert

                      After lunch the woman went Christmas shopping and of course  the men watched football

It looks as I had a little to much food

                      Next on my busy end of year plan came Gina and Jacobs birthday. We celebrated with lots of cocktails, snacks and a heavy duty card game until early hours. Everybody had lots of fun, especially Eric and Daniel. 

Getting ready for card game

Close to midnight - lots of cocktails

Eric and Daniel still thirsty

                    Christmas is approaching fast, only 3 weeks left, so it was time for me to produce some Christmas cookies. I made 1200 off them, 7 different kind. If anybody likes a recipe just let me know. You also find some of them in my blog entry from last Christmas.

Brunsli

Gelee Ringli

Makaroenchen

Chocolate Wheels

Cinnamon Horns

Mailanderli

Pecan Diamonds

Jacobs creations

Luke fully concentrated

Good Job for a 6 year old

                         Donna organized some nice Christmas boxes, filled them with Cookies, decorated and labeled them and after we give away 20 or so boxes we had just a few left for our own enjoyment.

                        My next assignment was butting up the Christmas Tree and start wrapping some presents.

Pretty good work for an old man

                         Christmas has arrived and the whole family got together in our house to celebrate. I took Donna's suggestion and prepared on easy meal. Shepherd's pie and a nice Montricher salad was on the menu. Everybody liked it or so they said. The kids could not wait to open up the presents and we had to please them. After we played the new Wii dancing game until late at night. We had a real nice Christmas.

Daniel got me a new lab top

Small problem with the bottle opener

Nitro, Gina and Daniel's new baby

Luke and Jacob love Christmas

Everybody`s turn to open presents

Jacob

Luke

Brian

Gina

and myself

Donna in action

Only 8 pm and everybody looks a bit tired

Merry Christmas 2010

FINAL MONTHS OF 2010 (Part 1)

                  A lot of time has past since my last blog entry, but do not worry, I am back (Arnold Schwarzenegger). It was incredibly busy, but a lot of  fun. Coming back from our fantastic vacation, inspired by Toni and Andreas renovation in there house, we started our own improvement to our home.

                   In a month's time we switched the office into a bedroom and vise versa. Everything came together beautiful and we really like the new look.

Old Office

New Bedroom

Old Office

New Office

                   Next, our Kids planed another birthday party for me on the 15th October, after all it was my birthday month and you take parties any way you can. That day I also opened the present I received in Switzerland and we actually made 3 meals out of it. This Swiss spaghetti taste so much better, especially with my Sauce Bolonaise.
                   

The Gift, I brought over from Switzerland 

Check how great this was put together

                        It was a beautiful, sunny day and we took advantage of it, I did not even have to cook. 

                 

The kids love their Cheese burger better than my cooking

Playing Frisbees with Jacob

Luke is beautifying our drive way

Good time with a card game

A happy birthday boy, 15 days after his real birthday

                         Also, Donna and I presented  Brian with a gift we brought him from Switzerland.

He did not ask for chocolate or a tee shirt, he just was asking to get a rock from the Alps. Here it is!

                       First week in November, Donna and I took Luke to the zoo in St Louis for his birthday and had a fabulous time and also took a lot of pictures. The problem is, the day after, some kids broke in to our house and stole the camera with some other stuff, so we also lost all the picture from that day. O well.

                       We took necessary preventions, improved security and ordered the same model camera on line and went off to Wisconsin to visit with Tony and Amy Lucero and his brother Mike and family at the Resort Grand Geneva. The weather was not cooperating very well, but we had a great time, partying in our suite, Tony had reserved for us. Ironically, the weather turned great for our Drive home. 

Grand Geneva

(Picture from Amy's Face book)

                      More to come!!