Christmas in England

 

Trying to organize this post is a little difficult. Christmas this year for me is basically one big crazy blur. We arrived a week before Christmas Day and it took us most of that week just to get over the jet lag. So between that and getting moved into our house I feel very proud of the fact that Christmas actually happened at our house at all ha.

I think the best way to organize my thoughts is to let the pictures be the guide and to cover everything as “Christmas Break”.

I feel like this picture sums up most of our time those first two weeks. Life with a shopping cart. (I mean that baby makes it totally look enjoyable).

Having to go shop so much for Christmas and moving in was good and bad. Good because we were forced to really get around and get to know what stores there were in our city, bad because I mean have you ever gone shopping the week before Christmas, with 3 kids in tow? It’s total CHAOS. I was in major “get it done” mode and Sean got completely shopped out a few days in. I mean I don’t blame him, there were sooooo many people at every store all trying to finish their last minute shopping. It was overwhelming for a guy who really enjoyed the solitude of ranch life.

But you know shopping so late in the holidays had its perks. We got our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and everything “Christmas” had just been marked 40% off. So we got an awesome deal.

Boxes. I think that would be the second thing that defined our first two weeks boxes, assembling and more boxes. My kids thought they’d died and gone to heaven….

Thankfully Sean and I were able to pull it together (barely) and help the kids get everything ready for Santa.

We wanted to make cookies to leave for Santa and since we had literally moved into our house the day before Christmas Eve we knew we needed the quick version. We searched high and low for prepared cookie dough…….I don’t think it exists here. (England friends if I’m wrong on that, PLEASE let me know where we can find it). So I grabbed the best looking pre-made “kind of like cookies” alternative that I could find. Cheesecake bites, I mean in my personal opinion that is totally something Santa wouldn’t mind eating at all, right?

As we were setting them on the plate this is the conversation that went down:

Lincoln: “Mom, can I have one?”

Me: “Sure” (I mean, perfect excuse for me to eat one too)…..(they were okay, not the best)

Lincoln: with a disgusted look “these are disgusting!”, deep thinking look “that’s okay though Santa will still like them” as he slides the plate back over to me.

I don’t know why, probably because we were deliriously tired at this point, but Sean I and could not stop laughing at that one.

Christmas morning came a little earlier than we expected. This was the first year that the kids woke us up to go downstairs. There are definitely great sleep advantages on Christmas morning when your kids are little. We thought it would be Lincoln that would be up first, but Kennedi had everyone in the house up by 7:00. I guess our coaching the night before that they couldn’t  go downstairs without Mom and Dad really stuck for her (thank goodness, she’s a known explorer and destroyer).

The kids got each other presents for under the tree and I got these videos the day they went “shopping”.

I filmed that on Marco Polo right after she got in the car. I didn’t know at the time that I could get the video off of the App so I filmed this next video on my phone to try and get what she said again……Round 2 is what I expected originally.

To her credit she did keep it a secret from Lincoln. It was so cute to see how excited they were to give each other those gifts.

Even though we were living in a whirlwind this Christmas season we really got to enjoy the Christmas spirit thanks to friends and family.

Our first day in our house a group from our ward came to do some Carolling at our house. It was so sweet, and Lincoln was begging to go Christmas Carolling after that for about a month.

Christmas Eve we went Carolling with friends in Leighton Buzzard on High Street. It was an awesome experience. So many people turned up and it was fun to hear all those people singing carols together…..not to mention the Santa Clause sighting.

 

 

Believe it or not we have family here in England. Esther and Lance live in London and have really helped us feel at home. I mean my kids ask about every other day if we can go to Aunt Esther’s house. We got to spend some of the Christmas holiday with them as well I didn’t get a lot of pictures, just a few from time in the park.

They took us to experience the green parrots in Hyde Park, Rachel and Olivia are pros with those things and knew exactly what snacks would coax them down to us. Kenni was enthralled and terrified at the same time, and Lincoln’s favourite was chasing all the pigeons.

New Years we decided to make it a relaxing day with the kids since we’d been going like crazy for most of our Holiday.

Our ward did a New Years Day walk around Willen Lake which I thought was a great way to start off the day.

We went out to lunch. All I’ll say is that it was an interesting experience, ending with some people a few tables over getting into a fist fight. But we got some cute pictures of the kids! Even though we told them we wouldn’t be going out to eat for a while because of some crazy behaviour (particularly that little lady featured below). Worth it right? I just kept telling myself that…..we couldn’t get home fast enough ha!

And ended our day with a movie night and dance party.

It was a good end to a very crazy, but fun Christmas Holiday.