Anyway, rewinding a little bit to Christmas Eve. Evie thoroughly enjoyed the excitement surrounding Christmas and especially the excitement of wrapping paper. She chipped in and did some wrapping of her own. DouDou was wrapped and unwrapped several times.
The festivities kicked off on New Years Eve at Julie, Phil, Joe and Maddy's house. We were accompanied by an pretty unhappy reindeer.
Fortunately, as soon as we got to the party and she saw one of her friends, our reindeer shed her outer layer and perked right up.
Tiny Santa hats were all the rage:
After multiple glasses of champagne, lots of yummy food and one minor reindeer meltdown, we made our way back home to get ready for Santa! Unfortunately, someone ate all but one of the slightly stale snickerdoodles, so Santa got a little gypped at our house, but he was still very generous.
But before I get to Christmas morning, Jim went to the midnight service at St. Paul's cathedral. He said that the line was thousands long and wound around the building and no pictures were allowed inside and the organ nearly blew his eardrums out and the tube was closed and there were no buses running, so he didn't stay too long for fear of never being able to get home again. But he did take some nice pictures and it was a good effort! Evie and I stayed at home and slept.
On Christmas morning, Jim and I were up hours before Evie and finally just went in and woke her up. Apparently the roles are reversed in this family. I think that next year she will know better than to sleep in on Christmas morning and we will be sorry that we didn't take advantage of her obliviousness this year and sleep in!
With a hungry baby, one cannot just jump right into the present opening. A banana was necessary to give her Christmas morning energy.
Then it was time to get down to business:
But not before rubbing a little banana in her Daddy's hair!
First up were the stockings.
After that, it didn't take her long to figure out that the boxes under the tree were really more exciting than she had anticipated:
We all got a lot of wonderful and generous presents from our family. We were very spoiled and if I put up all the pictures of all the presents that Evie got, it would take me far too long to finish this blog. Judging from the smile on his face, Jim's favorite present was the pack of Chips Ahoy style cookies that he got from Cookie Monster.
After we opened presents and had our coffee at home, we headed next door for breakfast with our neighbors Simon, Hua and Jack. Evie had a blast playing with Jack and Mouse (their cat). It was a delicious breakfast with salmon and scrambled eggs and bagels and more champagne (do you see a pattern?) and we rolled home afterwords, wondering how we were ever going to eat again in few hours at a pub near our house.
Somehow, though, we managed. Our pub Christmas lunch was delicious. Evie rejected her peanut butter sandwich in favor of some roast goose and some roasted pumpkin. She also had the opportunity to pick up some tips from older kids, who were demonstrating the proper way to throw a tantrum, including lying on the floor and screaming, hitting your Dad, and throwing yourself at the locked front door while yelling. Evie was very well behaved!
After all that gluttony, we felt it was necessary to walk up to the top of Primrose Hill and catch the last few minutes of daylight. It was cold, but felt good to move a little.
The day after Christmas--Boxing Day--is also a holiday in England and we were lucky to have been invited over for a late lunch and leisurely afternoon/evening with our friends Joan and Anu and their baby Niah. Evie and Niah go way back (from birth) so were happy to have the afternoon to play together.
There were a few rough moments, but we got through them.
And there was lots of good food and, of course, champagne.
Anu:
Joan and I tried to take a nice picture with uncooperative babies:
But everyone likes a good book, especially when there are lots of flaps to flap and fuzzy things to touch:
After a couple of days of recovery, we were so excited to see Rashmi and Siddarth who were in from LA visiting Rashmi's sister. Rashmi, Jim and Jackie all worked together in Houston, so it was a reunion on several levels!
The wine was flowing and we had gumbo for dinner, followed by a delicious cheese cake made by Simon (you can see our waistlines slowly expanding as the pictures continue). We laughed in a way that you can only laugh when you are hanging out with good friends.
It was a lot of fun and we were definitely sad to see see Rashmi and Sidd go. They are among the many friend we would like to import to London!
The next night was New Years Eve. Evie stayed with a babysitter and we headed down the road to Julie and Simon's for another raucous evening. Despite Julie's best efforts, guitar hero happened.
Then I was given the distinguished honor of being lead singer in "Rock Band" (guitar hero plus other instruments). It was horrific, but a lot of fun. We chose to play and sing Bon Jovi's living on a prayer, so I only really had to scream for a while. Even tone deaf people can sing that song.
After all the silliness, we rushed up to Primrose Hill, where we could see the fireworks all around the city. You can't tell from these pictures, but a lot of other people had the same idea and there were many, many very drunk people out celebrating. London doesn't appear to have any laws regarding when and where you can shoot off fireworks, so we found ourselves ducking for cover on more than one occasion while we were up on Primrose Hill. Not wanting to lose limbs or hair, we decided to head back down pretty quickly. Jim and I went straight home, but everyone else partied on until 4am (we are the only couple who had an early morning with a baby to look forward to). On our way home, random people wished us Happy New Year and called out from windows. It was rare and wonderful to experience such unabashed friendliness from Londoners!
Although the holidays are over, we have lots more celebrating to do. Evie turns one in less than two weeks and other festivities will be happening, too!
