December was a month of Christmas Spirit for us in England and the U.S.A. At the beginning of the month we took a trip downtown to see Leicester's Christmas dioramas.
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| Maya's thinking, "What is it?" |
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| Remarkably, the water fountain is still on, even though it's December! You can see the musical nativity scene in a "manger" off to the right and straight ahead another diorama and Christmas tree. |
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| Grumpy contest |
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| Maya and me in front of Leicester City Hall, where Maya got her birth certificate not so long ago. |
Christmas in Wigston
Our flight for Boston left on Christmas Eve, leaving us with lots of time to celebrate with Pete at home in Wigston.
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| Me, Maya, Craig, and Pete in front of our Christmas tree. |
Christmas cookie baking
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| Maya was in charge of sprinkling on the sugar. She took her job very seriously. |
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| Maya and Pete are keeping a good eye on the cookies in the oven. |
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| Yum! |
Christmas Eve-Eve, our home celebration
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| Maya discovers presents under the tree. |
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| What is it? |
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| A ball! |
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| And a music set! |
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| Now off to the airport, where we play like crazy in the kids waiting area jungle gym and Maya stuffs her face with an adult size plate of pasta. Phew! |
Christmas Day in America
Traveling on Christmas Eve across the Atlantic Ocean? Pros: No lines through security, everyone is in a generally jovial mood, flight attendants in costume, you can hear those bells a ringing and jing jing jingling too. Cons: That wild, screaming, misbehaving devil child is YOURS. Eight hours of pure bliss.
Jet lag tamed my normal shutter frenzy, but I did manage the following pics to document the day:
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| Maya wearing her Christmas Dress. |
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| Flattering action shot, pre-present-unwrapping. |
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| Maya and Katie |
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| Every Christmas my grandmother gets all the girls something on a matching theme. This year it was matching pjs, followed by a portrait of us all wearing our matching pjs (you will have to imagine). When the guys all unwrapped the matching flannels that my Mom got them, I knew that someone needed to take the corresponding photo. Here it is. |
Snow Days
It came a day or two late, but we got a nice "white christmas" snowfall. It was bitterly cold, but we bundled up and ran out for a little sledding while we could and then dashed back in to warm up.
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| Craig runs the sled up the hill. |
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| One, two three, whee all the way down the hill. |
