On our way to Selfridge's, it started to snow! Here we are in a not very Christmasy looking picture in downtown London. All those people in the bus behind us were probably on their way to the airport. Once, we took that bus from the airport and it reeked of urine...but I digress.
Selfridge's has a pretty fancy set up on the way to visit Santa, but Evie wasn't really feeling it. The robotic reindeer was a little scary (but the weird little elves popping out of the trees all around us were not)...
The Santa Express was a little overwhelming....
The pretty elf was a little less scary:
and Santa was just a big weirdo, with his beard, as usual, not correctly on his face. I wouldn't want to sit on Santa's lap either if I could see his mustache poking out above his fake beard! Evie did manage to squeak out that she would like a kitchen, though, before bolting to the other side of Santa's room.
Millie, on the other hand, wasn't bothered by Santa at all:
Eventually, we managed to get a silly family picture with Santa, but unfortunately for the world wide web, our scanner is broken, so it won't be featured on this blog.The snow was much more appreciated than Santa:
Our cab couldn't actually get us home, so we had a nice winter stroll in the fresh snow:
Evie and Jim built Evie's first snowman in our garden:
What up, snowman? 
Snow buddies... I wasn't there for the snowman building, but Jim reports that Evie was enthusiastically talking to her snowman, kissing him and hugging him, throughout the snowman making process:
By the next morning, the birds had eaten off his raisin eyes and mouth and eventually his head fell off, but there are still a few of his remains in our garden and Evie is still excited to say good morning to him when she has breakfast.Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, we were very disorganized and waited until the last minute to make oatmeal cookies for Santa:
And we tracked Santa's moves on Norco. Luckily, he was still in the South of France at that point.
Evie proudly put her cookies next to the fireplace:
Then we took a happy Christmas Eve picture of our happy girls! No, Evie, we don't know what to do when Millie does that either:
The next morning...miracle of miracles!...the cookies were gone!
And, the real Christmas miracle, Millie slept six hours straight and then into the morning!
Evie probably would have been happy with only her stocking...because it had Cinderella book in it (as a side note, I got the book at Oxfam for 1 GBP):
I also got some nice stuff in my stocking for when I finally motivate to go running:
And Evie learned about an important Christmas tradition: there will always be an orange in your stocking.
Both girls got some very sweet stuffed animals, which Evie decided she would be in charge of. I have since put Millie's away for when she's older.
Jim was the proud recipient of a painted by Evie mug:
You know it's Christmas when your wife gets you new underwear:
Hmm...you can see how Millie spends most of her time (except late at night, of course):
Eventually she woke up and gazed lovingly at her Millie Mouse, which her cousin Jenna picked out for her:
We saw the sweet, but elusive Millie smile on Christmas morning:
Christmas pajama party (courtesy of Nana and Papa...and my PJs are from a past Nana and Papa Christmas, too)! Evie likes to shout "SMILE!!!!" whenever a picture is taken and therefore ends up with her mouth open for a lot of them.
Finchley even got in on the Christmas action:
And I got some cool and updated winter head gear, so that I don't have to look like I'm wearing a purple tea cozy on my head anymore:
But wait...what is this!? A kitchen!!! Thanks, Santa!!!
Before she could start cooking, Evie had to get into her cooking outfit: A very pink tee-shirt bearing a picture of her number one blankie, Dou Dou, over a rainbow shirt and paired with a shockingly pink tutu with attached leggings. 
Time to cook!
And time to eat! The picnic blanket is courtesy of Aunt Kate, who made it for Evie before she was born.
Minnie Mouse (from Evie's and Millie's cousin Cora) joined us for the plastic food feast. She was appropriately dressed in a pink outfit:
Nothing like a tiny plastic hamburger to whet your appetite for Christmas dinner:
As you might recall, Jim came down with Chicken Pox the day that we were planning to have a pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner. Feeling gypped out of his pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, he insisted that we have pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner. Not really traditional, but it was delicious and he even made the pie crust!
This is what our dining room looks like. Every room of our house has been taken over by some sort of kid paraphernalia. The dining room is mostly an art room these days and we eat our meals surrounded by Evie's artistic efforts.
A very hungry Evie poses for her Daddy while he experiments with his new camera flash:
Yorkshire Pudding! And yet another opportunity to complain about UK appliances! The Yorkshire pud puffed up beautiful and then puffed up so much that our teeny tiny oven could not accommodate it. We had to slightly unpuff it to cook it without the top of it burning to a crisp. Grrr. It still tasted delicious.
Christmas Cracker Crowns:
What a feast! We had a delicious roast, slightly undercooked Brussels Sprouts, a little deflated but still yummy Yorkshire Pudding, mashed sweet potatoes (because Evie won't eat plain old mashed potatoes) and pumpkin pie with ice cream. Evie, upon receiving her pie, refused, at first, to try it. But when she finally could be coaxed into tasting it, she was instantly a pumpkin pie devotee. Ice cream, though, is still her favorite. Millie enjoyed the meal from within the sling and stopped crying long enough for me to eat after a little bouncing on the yoga ball.
Our first Christmas as a family of four was busy and fun! Next year we'll hopefully be able to celebrate it with our extended family, too! SMILE!!!!
