Baby Friends!

Whenever we meet up with friends from when the girls were tiny... we call them their baby friends. So when we were in the States over Christmas (yeah... still posting from December... just a little behind) we had a get together with some of our great friends from our married BYU ward. Thanks girls... it was a blast!

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Bitter Beer???

Tunnel Vision

So from Santa... Zack was given a tunnel! That's about it... gotta love the simplicity of children! All of the kids played in that thing forever. It's always good to know Santa is right on sometimes!

Girls' Christmas Nativities

One thing I love about the girls going to Church of England schools is they celebrate appropriately Christian holidays. (Actually... to be fair... I think the non-CofE schools do as well.)

So Makenna's nativity was super cute... all the little 4 year olds trying to have the attention span for a 30-minute show... waiting for their little part. Some of the children even sang solos. Makenna was one of the angels. This is a video of one of the songs... it doesn't sound great... but it's better than the others. Makenna is just behind Joseph... a little to the right.

This is a video of one of the songs... but at home... as it was difficult to hear at the show.

This is after the show... Makenna with her friends, Little Anna, Isabel and Elliott (or "Idiot")

Brooklyn's show was called, "The Christmas Jolly Postman." She played a horse and sang the songs with all the other children. The video of Brooklyn didn't turn out great because of the lighting but here's one of the main song.

If you look closely, Brooklyn is in the red shirt behind the girl with the tan shirt on.

Thanksgiving in London???

So it's kind of weird on major American holidays when you live in a different country and nobody even celebrates! The embassy sent out an email this month to remind the Americans about the Thanksgiving day service at St. Paul's Cathedral. Usually St. Paul's is like 10 pounds to get in... so we decided to kill two birds... It was a wonderful service. Very interesting to have English people speak about the freedom of America and why Americans should be grateful... but I guess it doesn't run so deep after 250 years. The ambassador spoke and the kids were bored out of their minds! I let them ditch school because I don't know any American kids that go to class on Thanksgiving! See if they ever want to ditch with me again! We took one picture inside then got in trouble as there was no photography allowed!

Then on December 1, we had all the Americans (and their non-American counterparts) from the ward over for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was a tight fit (22 in our 150 year old house) but it was super fun! We all have much to be thankful for... especially great friends, the Church, and yummy turkey... even in London!

These are the Pilgrims straight off the Mayflower :) All dressed up like fairies! Those pilgrims were weird!

Here's the lone Indian! (All the others ate their feathers)

And here are some people from the ward and the missionaries! Who is the pasty white one in front there?