Merry Christmas!

These past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic. The kids have been out of school, which is enough to keep me exhausted on its own. Plus my phone completely died, and I've had to adjust to the less than stellar camera on my new phone. And of course, all of the last minute Christmas things we've had to do.

I love Christmas, and this year is no exception. It's been a little bit harder though. I miss my family and friends back in the States, and the loved ones we've lost over the past year.

Still, I'm looking forward to seeing the kids' faces when they see that Santa has come to visit. And hopefully we will get to talk to family a little bit, or at least exchange pictures. We are just having a quiet day at home, which is my ideal way to spend a holiday. Snuggled up in blankets being lazy and eating good food.

Happy Holidays everyone!

School Plays and Activities

The kids are officially on winter break until 4 January. Leading up to the end of term, they did lots of fun activities at school.

One of the big things the school did was the Christmas play. There was a separate one for the nursery class and the infant classes (Reception and Year 1 and 2).

Lily was one of three shiny stars in the nursery play. I think their play was just a bunch of cute songs with some dancing, but I'm not sure because Lily got strep throat the day before the performance and missed it. She was sad, and I was sad because this would've been her first play. She may have loved it, or she may have gotten self conscious and refused to participate. Guess we'll find out next year.

The infant play was all about "the magic of Christmas." The premise was that two kids were ill at Christmas, and the Christmas fairy granted their wishes to do all of the fun stuff kids love during the holiday. The play was written by one of the teachers, and the music teacher wrote an original song for it. The Reception class did the nativity bit.

This school is not religiously affiliated, but it is standard in England for schools to have a small amount of religious education. The nativity play is a big tradition here. Now, we're not religious, but we will encourage the kids to learn a lot about many religions. And, at least at this school, they encourage diversity and do like to expose the kids to different religions and cultures.

So Miles landed the part of a wise man. He even had a line - "I bring frankincense!" (He said it loudly and enthusiastically, it was cute.) He told us leading up to the play that he couldn't wave at us because he had to just smile and walk kingly, and he did just that. I love watching performances at this age.

Delivering his line

The Saturday after the plays was the school's Christmas Fair. I didn't get any pictures of this because I was helping out. There were stalls with vendors selling stationery, teddy bear clothes, and makeup, to name a few. There were raffles, crafts, and games, and Santa was there for photos. We didn't get pictures with Santa here, because we had to rush off to a Christmas party put on by Matt's workplace. It was fun though. We won a 1000 piece puzzle through the raffle, and the kids got sugar cookies and sausages to eat.

Then basically the last week of school before end of term was just fun and games. The classes had Christmas parties, visits from Father Christmas, and lots of craft opportunities. Miles' class even had a elf on the shelf. Luckily he didn't ask why we don't have one - they creep me out!

And now, nearly a whole month of three kids at home 24/7. Wish me luck...

Australian/American Thanksgiving in England

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday since the kids were in school Thursday. We are awaiting delivery of the dining room furniture we ordered, so our Australian expat friends offered the use of their house in exchange for delicious American food.

We went simple and traditional with the food, but the preparation was anything but simple. Our menu consisted of turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, smashed potatoes, rolls, and pumpkin pie. Our hosts would supply another dessert and the adult beverages.

Some of the ingredients were difficult to find, but we managed. The real challenge was cooking all of the food in an English kitchen. The ovens here are much smaller, so we could only cook one thing at a time. Add in adjusting to a different oven, temperature conversions, some substitutions in ingredients, and trying to clean up with a sink that is smaller than some of our pans, and you can see why Matt was cussing and stressed. But we (he) got through it, and we carted our feast to our friends' house.

Once we got there, we were able to enjoy ourselves. We had drinks while warming up a few things, and the kids all ran off to play.

Pretty soon we were able to sit down to eat, and the food turned out great. The pumpkin pie and homemade "cool whip" were delicious, and the sticky date pudding (aka sticky toffee pudding) made by our hosts was amazing.

Overall it was a really good day. Next year though, it has to be at our apartment, with more practice. :)