Well, let's see what happened in the final two months before Christmas ...
I had taken off the week of Thanksgiving, so we had time to visit the Silverton Christmas market on Nov. 20th, which between a Viennese baker, 'authentic German sausages' and Gingerbread hearts directly imported from Germany was closer to 'the real thing' than expected.
And after a cozy Thanksgiving 'Dinner for two' on Thursday, we made a trip to the coast the next day and visited 'Hug Point' just south of Astoria for the first time:
One week later we were off to the next Christmas market, this time organized by the German-American Society and just for one short Saturday - it was correspondingly crowded with the line to getting in easily extending a full block. While we scored some Christmas cookies (though we passed on the $5 per (!) cookie offerings of the first stand), we skipped the German sausage lunch option, as the line moved at a pace that suggested we may be getting dinner instead...
Michaela got us a very fun buildable advent calendar, which - naturally - is almost complete at this point:
