The Run Up to Christmas

The festive season kicked off just after Thanksgiving with Tabitha's School Christmas Fair. Tabby and I helped with the Lucky Dip booth then did Christmas crafts before visiting Santa's Grotto. Tabs wasn't very impressed with Santa. She said he was definitely NOT the real Father Christmas because 1) She spotted a glimpse of his regular shirt under his Santa suit 2) She noticed elastic around his ears 3) He gave her babyish picture books (when he should've KNOWN she's been onto chapter books for ages now).

After the fair we headed to the Christmas Tree Farm to pick out and cut down our tree.

Back at home, as we were unfurling the tree, Edward found a strange bug that put him off the whole experience. I'm not sure he's entirely convinced that live trees are hygienic enough for indoor use.

Next weekend Tabs and I we went to The Dickensian Christmas Festival in Rochester with our friends Petra, Fred and Bjorn. The kids dressed up for the occasion and Fred ran around telling everyone they were "Dickensian children". When they went over to have a look at "Miss Havisham" from Great Expectations a big group of Italian tourist begged to have them all pose together for photographs.

The High Street was full of Dickensian characters...

Being half Swedish, and therefore used to real snow, Fred was perplexed by the bubbly substance they were pumping into the air for festive ambiance.

 My favorite moment came when Fred doffed his cap to this "chimney sweep" and said, "'ello Guvna!" The man was enchanted and wanted to hire Fred on the spot as his little chimney helper.

A few days later was Tabitha's Christmas Play. For the first time since pre-school, they didn't do The Nativity. Instead it was a secular program of music and poetry (more American style).

I suppose they save the nativity for the younger classes...which is sad because that means Tabby's dream of playing Mary in the Christmas play is over.

Luckily she thought of a way around this disappointment by dressing up as Mary for non-uniform day. Fred backed her up by going as Joseph. None of the other kids were in fancy dress (as they call it out here), they were all in normal party clothes. But this didn't upset Fred and Tabs at all - they loved doing their own thing. Long may it last!

I'm not a massive fan of shopping in general, but Christmas shopping is even more of a drag with the manic crowds and all. Luckily I have Dakota to keep me entertained. The best is shopping for White Elephants at dodgy charity shops. We kill ourselves laughing at the weird stuff we find!

Our local Mall had a New York, New York theme to their Winter Wonderland this year. They had walk/don't walk signs, yellow cabs, fire hydrants and everything. It's odd when you live in a country that's celebrating your country of origin. I don't know why but it makes me feel kinda smug. Anyway, the best part of the winter wonderland was the Santa! 

Here's a video of the weirdest/campest/creepiest Santa encounter ever!   

Once school was out, Christmas could began in earnest. German Markets are really popular in Europe at Christmastime. I told Edward I wanted to go this year and he was surprisingly into the idea. Normally he's not very keen on going to the Continent because his childhood vacations were spent in a campervan travelling all over Europe and, as a result, suffers from post traumatic stress whenever I mention either Europe or campervans!

Turns out, while I was talking about actually going to Germany, he was talking about going to the German Market at Hyde Park in London! Hmmm.

So we stayed in London. But it was still fun.

Roasted chestnuts. Doesn't get much more Christmassy than this! Too bad 90% of them were nasty.

Tabitha's favorite thing was this crazy talking tree!

While Tabs was being entertained by the tree, the rest of us indulged in a little competition. Anyone who knows our family knows that Edward, Dakota and I have a fierce, ongoing archery battle. We are powerless to resist the archery booth. Dakota won this time...but his title WILL be short-lived! 

The final days in the run up to Christmas were spent with friends and family; relaxing, chatting, watching Christmas movies and baking. My friend Petra hosted two yummy baking days for the kids; one to make these traditional Swedish saffron buns and one to make gingerbread (imported from her Swedish chef friend). Petra's baking is legendary (which is handy because ours stinks!)

Here's the gingerbread house village the kids and I made with Edward's sister, Eleanor. The perfect house on the far right is Leanor's and the monstrosity on the bottom left that looks like it was drug backwards through a swamp is Dakota's attempt to bring realism to the project by being that one house in the neighborhood that brings down all the others. I should have made him eat it!