Ticket to Ride

Christmas 2025

It doesn’t seem possible, but Christmas Eve and Day have come and gone already!

Our celebration started on Christmas Eve morning, with Christmas Crunch:

I made time early in the day to deliver gifts to all of my neighbors on Gloriana, and also chased Roald around my island for a bit, trying to get the perfect picture (which I did).

Bunny had to work in the morning, but when she got home, she put the finishing touches on this year’s Advent Lego project, Rivendell:

And then we went to my second-favorite service of the entire church year, Christmas Eve candlelight:

Candlelight being a relative term, as it was still fairly light out when the service was over. We didn’t stop by the city of St. Louis Christmas tree downtown this year, so it was pretty bright for our drive through the Way of Lights!

When we got home, I made wassail, which was a bit of a change for us…I think it may become a new tradition!

And we enjoyed a gingerbread layer cake with gingerbread mousse filling and molasses cream cheese frosting, and topped with sugared cranberries for dessert.

We also played our new Christmas Eve board game, Ticket to Ride Northern Lights. I lost spectacularly, but not as spectacularly as Ladybug won!

We watched the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker and Rick Steves’ European Christmas, and then I filled the stockings and escorted Mary and Joseph to the stable. I hope there’s never a day when we don’t want to put up the Little People nativity, even though we no longer have any little people living in our home1

On Christmas Day morning, we enjoyed our favorite coffee cake:

And then we went back to church, nice and early so I could get some pictures in front of the beautiful church Christmas tree:

Our church is always beautiful, but there’s something extra special about it at Christmastime!

The family picture we took after the service is probably one of the nicest ones we’ve ever taken!

We opened presents when we got home, and then I got started on dinner, the best dinner of the year, the famed “Pick Out Dinner!”

Setting the table is pretty low-key compared to Thanksgiving, but I still like to make it look nice, including napkins folded like Christmas trees. I added a few small Christmas trees to our traditional centerpiece of the Advent wreath…they balanced out the additional candles I often add quite nicely!

We had quite the spread this year!

We spent the afternoon and evening watching Christmas movies, playing games, and building Lego sets. The weather was far too warm for Christmas (it felt, smelled, and sounded like Easter!), but thankfully the weather isn’t what makes for a good Christmas, and we had a lovely day. And luckily for us, Christmas lasts for 12 days, so we still have our “fancy” (although dialed back a bit this year thanks to rising grocery costs) dinner and more cookie baking to look forward to…and maybe even some colder weather! Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas 2024

Advent went by so quickly, and here we are at Christmas already! Let’s take a look at this year’s celebration, starting with a Christmas lights walk Moose and I took Christmas Eve Eve…we think this should be our neighborhood’s official Christmas tree

Christmas Eve always starts with the Captain:

Chickadee finished our Lego Advent project, and Turkey and Moose played the first game of chess:

The Christmas Eve church service is my second favorite of the year…I think it’s interesting that my two favorite services both involve candlelight.

After church, we stopped by the city of St. Louis Christmas tree. It was rainy, which is unfortunate (so much for my dreams of a white Christmas), but at least that kept it from being too bright out, because it was still pretty early and should have been pretty light.

And then we drove through the Way of Lights.

When we got home, it was picture time. It’s the second year we’ve had LED lights on our Christmas tree, but I’m still not used to them…I can’t help but feel that they make the pictures look like they were taken in an aquarium!

Bunny came up with the idea for this year’s cake (carrot with a gingerbread mousse filling and cream cheese frosting), and we made it together…it was so delicious!

Of course I had to play Animal Crossing and check in with all my neighbors (especially Roald!).

We played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries while watching our traditional Christmas Eve shows (the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker and Rick Steves’ European Christmas)…I was the winner of the game I played with 152 points, and completed every route in my hand (11 in total, I believe), plus used every train car and every card I had. I think that’s the Ticket to Ride equivalent of a complete game?

I filled the stockings, tracked Santa with NORAD (I made sure he got to both St. Louis and Chicago) and set up the nativity before bed.

Christmas Day always begins with our favorite coffee cake:

Since I wasn’t entirely happy with my very blue photos from Christmas Eve, I took some more pictures at church:

Christmas morning is such a beautiful service!

We got a very nice family photo afterwards:

After we got home and opened presents, I got to work on dinner. I decided to do things a little bit different this year. Instead of making a fancy dinner, which we all enjoy, but isn’t the highlight of the holiday for us, I focused all of my energy on the best meal of the year, the Pick Out Dinner. Since that was our main Christmas dinner, I set the table with the china, folded napkins like Christmas trees, and discovered that a Stammtisch sign I’ve been wanting for a while magically appeared on the table while I was working on the dinner.

Our dinner was our usual favorites, including an extended cheese board, jalapeño popper and Rotel dips, a shrimp ring, several kinds of sandwiches, mozzarella sticks, and buffalo Chex mix.

I love making salame roses!

It’s our favorite meal of the whole year!

After dinner, we watched White Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Disney World Christmas parade. And then Ryan and I played Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries (using the new anniversary train cars we got for Christmas!), to determine who the house’s Ticket to Ride: Christmas champion is. Spoilers…not me! I scored almost 100 points less than I did in yesterday’s game (only 54!!!) and Ryan is the undisputed champion.

And so another Christmas has come and gone…but the 12 Days of Christmas is just beginning, and we still have some more fun planned! Merry Christmas!

Summer School 2024

I can’t believe that both the Olympics and summer vacation are over, but here we are. There were so many great moments, and today I’m taking a look back at our Paris 2024-themed summer school, starting with our visit to the Olympic Spectacular right here in St. Louis:

We made our favorite edible Olympic torches, and had a lovely toast to Paris 2024 with sparkling cider. I’m not going to lie, I was a little mad that we had already built the Lego Eiffel Tower years ago, because it would have been a nice summer school activity, but at least we had a ready-made centerpiece!

Our big activity for the summer was trying out some French recipes. We cooked a lot of different things, starting with a special series of meals for the Opening Ceremonies, and culminating with the pièce de résistance of the summer (and maybe my culinary career!), the Croquembouche. It’s nice that we’re finally at a point where both Ladybug and Chickadee can do a lot in the kitchen!

  • Croissants
  • Salade Niçoise
  • Vichyssoise
  • Bœuf Bourgignon
  • Macarons
  • Crepes
  • Salade Lyonnaise
  • Quiche Lorraine
  • Chocolate Soufflé
  • Gougères
  • Lavender Madeleines
  • Steak au Poivre with Red Wine Pan Sauce
  • Plateau de Fromages
  • Lemon-glazed French Sable Cookies
  • Croquembouche

I had a good book list, but coming up with crafts beyond cooking was a bit of a challenge. We did try to be fashion designers…do you think we’re ready for French haute couture?

And of course we made medals:

We had a lot of fun being creative with cooking and crafts!

I’m so glad Ticket to Ride Paris came out in time for us to play this summer! And we also played Ticket to Ride France (and watched all of the episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe we have set in France), which educated us on just how little we know about French geography!

Here’s a look at our complete medal table…Team USA definitely won!

Summer wrapped up quickly…on Monday, we begin the 2024-25 school year!

Summer School 2021

It seemed like the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics would never get here, and now they’ve already come and gone. Here’s a look back at our Japan-themed summer school.

We visited Origami in the Garden at the Missouri Botanical several times over the summer. The large-scale art installation was the perfect field trip to coincide with Tokyo 2020 (and was also postponed from last summer).

We also visited the Olympic Spectacular in St. Louis at Francis Field, home of the 1904 Summer Games:

I made a few fun treats for the Olympics…Olympics torches (white chocolate covered pretzels) and Team USA CHEERios treats.

We did a lot of cooking and tried a lot of Japanese foods. I worked really hard to find things we hadn’t had before, and used a variety of cooking methods and unfamiliar ingredients. We tried:

  • Spicy Ramen/Udon
  • Pork Gyoza
  • Coffee Jelly
  • Okonomiyaki
  • Matcha Mochi Cake
  • Vegetable Tempura
  • Potato Korokke
  • Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake
  • Kani Cream Korokke
  • Chicken Katsu Sandwich
  • Matcha Green Tea Cookies
  • Oyakodon

We were supposed to go out to a Japanese restaurant this summer, but COVID-19, so we got a party platter of sushi instead:

I’ve been holding on to the Lego Architecture Tokyo skyline since last year, and we finally got to build it!

Our American Girl dolls got into the Olympic spirit:

In between watching as much of the Olympics as we could, we also did some more traditional school work. We learned about Japanese history and culture, as well as the history of the Olympics. We read a lot of books…some I read out loud, and some were book basket choices. We also watched a selection of Olympic documentaries:

  • First—London 2012
  • The Everlasting Flame—Beijing 2008
  • Atlanta’s Olympic Glory—Atlanta 1996
  • 16 Days of Glory—Los Angeles 1984
  • Athens 2004: Stories of Olympic Glory
  • Seoul 1988

And we also did several crafts, including origami, paper lanterns, Koinobori (Japanese carp windsocks), pipe cleaner and tissue paper cherry blossom branches, and medals (of course!):

I’ve been holding on to Ticket to Ride: Japan since last year, and we finally had a chance to play! I really enjoyed the new game mechanics introduced in this edition, and it was fun to get to know the geography of the area a little bit better.

We updated our medal chart every evening…here’s a look at the final results…we were very excited that the US won the gold medal race and had the most medals overall!

And, better late than never, our Family Olympics, which was delayed due to heat. We only had four events this year (frisbee throw, broad jump, soccer kicks, and a running race), thanks to time constraints and a lack of basketball hoops on the backboards we normally use. Technically, Turkey came in first, but since we participate as a family, we all won gold!

This summer school was a long time coming. I think we all still have mixed feelings about the fact that the Olympics were held at this time, but we had to just accept that that was out of our control, and embrace the Olympics as we usually do. It’s always hard to say goodbye when they extinguish the flame, but the Winter Olympics are less than six months away, and we only have to wait three more years for Paris 2024!

The Top Five–Around the House Photos of 2020

Continuing my series of “Top Five” lists to end the year, I’m moving on to photos taken around the house, a place we’ve all spent many more hours than usual in 2020!

To start off, a picture of my complete Ticket to Ride collection, as seen in February. I’ve actually added two more games since then (the newest board, plus the only other one from my collection that was missing), but I still love seeing how many different maps are/were in my collection!

This might not be the best picture ever, but it represents one of the few high points of the year for me…the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons:

I’m a huge fan of the Bésame Cosmetics “Love, Lucy” collection, and I really like how this picture of the lipstick I purchased turned out:

One day, I went upstairs for school and found this in my chair. It tickled me.

To the end the list as I began, a recent picture of an old Ticket to Ride game played with the clear trains from the edition I received for Christmas. The trains are so cool!

That’s just a small glimpse into our year as seen in photos taken around the house!

The Complete Ticket to Ride Collection–2020 Edition

I know I’ve talked about my very favorite series of board games, Ticket to Ride, in the past (it even made my “40 of My Favorite Things” list last year!). After adding the newest map collection, Japan and Italy, plus a special, available-only-in-Europe board of Poland that Ryan ordered for me, I thought it would be fun to get a photo of my entire collection. Even I was a little surprised by just how large it is!

Yes, I have it all, including the card game, the dice expansion, the My First Journey boards, and even a set of character score markers. As far as I know, I’m only missing two significant items (and one of them really isn’t even that huge). I never did get around to purchasing the Halloween freighters, which really aren’t necessary, but look fun. I also didn’t buy the 15th anniversary game, which I still have mixed feelings about. Ordering a whole new game just to have a set of translucent trains seems a bit extravagant, but as a completionist, it bothers me that I don’t have it, plus translucent trains!

I can’t wait to see what they come up with next…they’ve done everything I’ve hoped for (including a London board), except for one map…I’d love to see Ticket to Ride Chicago, which could have some fun twists by combining all three of the passenger trains that come into the city: Amtrak, Metra, and of course, the “L!”

Ready for the First Day of School!

The summer went by way too quickly, and it’s already time for the first day of the 2019-2020 school year! Yesterday was spent doing a few last fun things before we get back to work…playing board games, baking cookies, building a Lego set, and having an Iron Man movies marathon:

Today, on the other hand, was “cleaning day.” We got the school ready (more or less) for another year of learning. Surprisingly, not too much has changed in the last year, just some minor rearranging, which is very unusual for us!

We had a “Farewell to Summer” dinner tonight…ribs, corn on the cob, baked beans, watermelon, and root beer floats for dessert. We also watched Detective Pikachu, which was a really cute movie, even for someone like me, who isn’t too familiar with Pokemon.

And the outfits are ready for tomorrow morning!

Everything else that needs to be ready for tomorrow is good to go…I put the schultüte together (but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see their contents), organized the bookshelves, and got all the new workbooks sorted out and put on desks. I’m looking forward to beginning our 12th year of homeschooling!

Summer School 2019

Just like that, another year’s summer school has come to an end. I think our Rick Steves’ Europe themed summer school might be my favorite that we’ve done so far, because even though I didn’t have to do as much work (until it was time to start cooking), and hands-on activities and field trips were a little elusive (although I did make a few things work!), we all learned so much, and had a lot of fun while doing it!

So what did a primarily video-based summer school look like? We watched (if I counted correctly) 72 episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe over the course of two months. While we couldn’t “visit” every place I would have liked, we did get a great overview of Europe with “trips” to Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Palestine, plus a few other places. We also watched all three regular travel skills specials and the cruising special. We even found time for all three other specials: Christmas, Easter, and Festivals! (We watched The Story of Fascism in Europe last spring, and since it was kind of intense, we didn’t watch it again this summer.) I bought my oldest students travel journals, and Chickadee a sketchbook, and they wrote and/or drew something for every episode we watched. Places they hope to visit someday, interesting facts, travel tips…anything that jumped out at them. I really hope they’ll keep these journals, so that if they ever do have the opportunity to go to Europe, they can look through them, and see what their younger selves thought would be cool to visit, and maybe add some locations to their itinerary.

I mentioned field trips and hands-on activities. Some of them were a bit of a stretch, but I did my best. For example, we visited Frankenmuth, MI, this summer, which is known as “Michigan’s Little Bavaria.” I figured this was as close we could get to visiting a European town, and it really did look like I imagine some German towns do. We also got to eat a lovely German meal while we were there:

Speaking of food, we also tried a new-to-us cuisine this summer when we went to a local Bosnian restaurant. We were all very impressed, both with the dishes and the “slow-food” way of eating there…I’m sure we’ll be going back!

And how could we make it through the day we learned about traveling in Greece without having gyros?

The St. Louis Art Museum is hosting a special exhibit of work by a European artist, Paul Gauguin, which was a nice way to experience a bit of European culture:

Now, on to “other activities.” We played a lot of games this summer: Ticket to Ride Europe, 10 Days in Europe, and Ticket to Ride: My First Journey (European Map). These all gave us a chance to talk about the various cities/countries on the maps, and recall things we had seen watching Rick Steves’ Europe, and talk about the places we’d like to visit. I also gave my students a few special assignments…Chickadee made a poster about her favorite European city, (Paris), Ladybug wrote a 1,500 word essay about hers, (Rome), and my oldest students read Travel as a Political Act, and I have to say, I think our discussions about that book might have been my favorite part of the whole summer. They certainly learned a lot about life in Europe and the importance of travel, and I think their worldview changed a bit because of it! For one hands-on activity everyone could enjoy, we built the only Lego Architecture European skyline set we didn’t already have: Paris. It was a fun little build, and a nice addition to our collection!

And finally…cooking at home! This is always one of my favorite parts of summer school, but I have to confess, I kind of put this off to the end of the summer, and was rushing to cook all the things I had planned. In the end, we tried French, Swiss, Norwegian, Spanish, Hungarian, British, Italian, German, and Middle Eastern cuisines at home (full details on what we tried next week). I think we all have some new favorites, and I definitely learned a few new cooking techniques along the way!

Obviously, traveling to Europe as a large family isn’t a realistic option, at least not for us. But I did my best to give my children a glimpse into European culture and history, and more than that, I really I hope I inspired in them a desire to travel when they’re older and have the opportunity. There are so many interesting places and great people throughout the world, and I am grateful for any chance to explore them, even if we had to do it vicariously for now!

Chickadee Thursday

Last Thursday, I shared a picture of Chickadee with the poster she made for our European-themed summer school. Today, I’m taking a look at something else she did in summer school this year:

She’s played the US map of Ticket to Ride: My First Journey before, but this summer was her first chance to play the European map. She recognized many of the illustrations from watching Rick Steves’ Europe, and I didn’t even have to try to let her win…she’s a natural!