Christmas in England

On Christmas Day, we visited Big Nan at her new home in Somerton, a residential home where she is very well looked after.

Cora read to her the letter Santa left, which explained that he had delivered her No. 1 request to her Valencia home.

Yes, we are now the proud owners of a cotton candy machine. (Thanks, Juliana and Maya, for the brilliant idea...)

(Another sidenote: listening to Cora read her letter aloud gave us all such an amazing feeling. Cora's reading has advanced leaps and bounds over the last few weeks.)

 We celebrated Christmas twice in England, with a lovely roasted pork dinner on Tuesday and a larger family celebration (and turkey dinner) on Boxing Day. That's when Big Nan and Dean, Jenny and Euan joined us here at Nan and Pop's house.

 Here we are after the meal and the Christmas crackers, while the little ones rested upstairs watching an Ice Age Christmas special DVD.

 Then it was time for presents! In this scene, the children are opening up gifts from Dean and Jenny - Tinkerbell costumes for the girls and a sword/shield set for Euan.









Our fairies looked so cute. I hope the costumes still fit next October!



















All tired out from the celebrating...

We've had an interesting few nights of sleep this trip. Amazingly, both girls slept through the night our first night here. The next night wasn't any good, though.

Wednesday night wasn't too bad, with Violet waking up a couple of times but settling down quickly. On Thursday night, jet lag hit Cora hard, and she was wide awake for several hours. Meanwhile, Violet slept thoroughly, from 8 p.m. until 10 a.m.

But, on Friday she didn't get a nap during the day as we were out and about. Friday night, Cora slept fine, and Violet was awake from 2:30 a.m. until about 8 a.m. Hopefully we'll all get on track now!