Oh what fun it is!

Now that Christmas is almost a month behind us, it's time to share what we were up to the month of December.

Olivia had a Christmas party with her classmates at a local pizza restaurant where they all made their own personal pizzas which was followed by a visit from Father Christmas (as the British people call Santa) who delivered gifts to each child. 

She was all smiles and laughter until I whipped out my phone to take a picture of her

At Olivia's school, the reception and pre-reception classes (that's kindergarten and pre-k for you Americans) put on a Christmas performance and her class sang a song about being the happiest Christmas tree.  Yeah yeah... I know none of the kids in the photo below actually look happy but they were pretty cute.  I was proud of Olivia. She gets overcome with stage fright/nervousness easily at these type of things and usually just freezes and stands there.  This time she actually sang the song which is a huge improvement over her last school performance back in early summer.  We've still got some work to do on the accompanying hand actions, but I'm happy with baby steps.

Our Elf, Andy, made a return appearance to our house for about a month.  The girls, especially Olivia, loved waking up every morning and going to search the house to see what Andy was up to.

On Olivia's first day of her Christmas break, I took the girls to a theater in the West End for a Christmas performance of The Stickman, a popular children's book.  It was Ashton's first theater show and she did great!  Olivia loved it too as the show was filled with fun music, dancing and audience participation.

Special ice cream treat after the show

One of my friends from my playgroup hosted a super fun Christmas party at her house that involved making gingerbread houses.  Olivia loved helping me "design" the house and putting on all the candies.  It was quite tricky getting all three of us and a gingerbread house back to our home via a taxi without the gingerbread house getting dropped or breaking apart, but I'm happy to report I successfully managed.

Ashton's involvement?  Eating the candy

Geoff and I had a date to the Royal Albert Music Hall to see Handle's Messiah performed.  It was performed by a choir of over five hundred people!  My favorite part was when the entire audience rose to their feet and stood while the choir majestically performed the Hallelujah Chorus.  Hallelujah, indeed!

On Christmas eve, we took the girls to see their first official movie at the cinema.  They've both been to the cinema before for the annual Halloween parade/movie event we've done, but that's a little different.  We went to see Paddington at the cinema in the basement of Selfridges, the famous London department store.  Since most of the movie was filmed in London, we were hopeful the girls' attention would be held by all the London sights that are familiar to us.  They did OK for the first two-thirds of the movie.  The last third, they both started crying and both wanted to sit on my lap.  Nevermind the fact that Geoff's lap was completely capable and open.  Of course, that's the point when my bladder was completely full and they insisted on sitting right on top of it with all their weight.  We/I survived until it ended and now Olivia gets excited anytime she sees anything Paddington related.  

Happy Christmas Eve!

 Opening their Christmas jammies

Happy Christmas!

Celebrating our Savior Emmanuel's birthday with a birthday cake.  Chocolate, of course, because I'm pretty sure chocolate is Jesus' favorite

On New Year's Day, Geoff was in Austin for a friend's wedding so I took the girls to Kew Gardens to see a big Christmas lights display they had going on there.  Despite the cold temperatures, we had fun checking out the lights and riding a few of the rides. 

I love this quote I read recently:  "The business of life is the acquisition of memories".  I think we successfully acquired a lot of new, fun memories this Christmas season!