Christmas Traditions - Old and New

We Survived. Our first Christmas away from home, with no extended family. We survived and actually had a wonderful time celebrating in our new home in London.  To solve the hole- in the- belly pain of missing our family like crazy, we brought some traditions from home here to London to cure our home-sickness and started some new traditions of our own based on English traditions.

Warning Readers: This is going to be a long post. We celebrated Christmas with all our might, so there are lots (and lots!) of pictures and comments to note. Being that this is probably going to be our first and only Christmas away from home, we want to capture every bit so that when we are exhausted by the numerous amount of family events next year  surrounded by our loving family in years to come, we can look back at our little English Christmas in jolly 'ol London as a family of four.

New London Tradition - Family Carol Service at St. Paul's Cathedral

We stood in the rain for an hour, then waited inside for another hour to take part in the singing of carols in the famous St. Pauls Cathedral. We were soaked ( lost the umbrella), exhausted from chasing two toddlers around and hungry - but it was worth it. How often can you say you went to a Christmas  service at St. Paul's cathedral? To top it all off, we met up with our Columbus/London friends The Browns and got to enjoy it with them!

Avery and Caroline

 Avery practicing her Virgin-Mary like skills rocking her baby

(Lane was not pleased with me allowing her to venture off to this roped off area of the chapel to take this shot! I'll do anything for a cute pic of my girl)

Tradition from Home: Bundling up to see Christmas lights

At home we go to the Columbus Zoo, here in London we go to Tralfagar square to see giant trees lit up and hear carolers. Though the zoo and the public square are very different, at this time of year both are crowded, cold and at the end of the night you think to yourself "okay, we survived it", so we felt right at home. 

The Flood family having a picnic while listening to carolers.

 Watching the carolers ( they were AWFUL!)

As any true toddler in London or home in Columbus - tantrums are inevitable.

Tradition from Home: Getting Dressed up for Christmas Eve Church Service

As always, we got in our fancy Church clothes, had the traditional "Let's just watch mass on TV"(Lane), "Don't brush my hair!!!"(Avery), "bah, blah, cry arch back in pain- meaning I'm sick of being stuck in my stroller"(Stella), "Fine, then we just won't go- tears"(Lo) fights, and headed to Church. We hiked uphill to get to our new church, chased the kids around throughout the 45 minutes, and were way overdressed for the 3pm casual service. 

We recently found this path that gives us a more direct path to our church. It is super sweet, and didn't  the family look cute hiking up in their fancy-clothes?

As we always do at home in front of the Mavko tree - we took our traditional Christmas eve picture by our super small tree in our church clothes...I think it's one of the best we've ever gotten.

 New London Tradition: Jesus' Birthday Party Poppers.

We decided that typical Christmas traditions were too stuffy for Jesus' birthday party... so we lightened it up a little and celebrated with some loud, colorful, messy fun poppers. The girls had a blast, Lane cringed at the mess we made (which made Lo laugh) and at the end of it we all decided it is a tradition we will carry on for many years to come.

Tradition from Home: Packing on the Holiday pounds.

We grocery shopped, we ate, we drank, we ate, we ate.... and come New Year's we will be making those typical " I'm never eating again" resolutions.

Something new to this portion of the Holiday was that I had to cook - rather than being spoiled by both of our families doing the hard work. As you can see, Lane did his part by keeping me stocked up on wine and Champagne.

 Mom's Cheezy squares ( she made them while visiting us earlier in December...but I popped them in the oven so I stole the credit for their delicious-ness).

 Chicken and Noodles. Mom always makes Chicken Noodle soup on Christmas eve, and Aunt Dorothy makes Chicken and Noodles on Christmas day. My version ended up being an exact compromise between the two versions which made us think of both wonderful ladies.

New London Tradition: Crackers

For the entire month before December 25th I thought the adorable wrapped packages sold at every store around were edible crackers wrapped in Christmas paper (ignorant American I am). To my delight, we found out that these crackers were actually for enjoying with friends and family and "cracking" the wrapping apart to find what small happy-meal like toy and crown are inside. We will be talking about these crackers for years to come.... and hopefully can find some in the states to keep the tradition going.

The tradition is to hand a cracker to another as a "season's greetings" type of gesture and each person pulls from each side.

When broken apart, you find a small trinket and a paper crown to adorn on your head.

Tradition from Home: Elves, Santa, and Spoiled Children

I have told my sister numerous times that I will never bring the "elf on the shelf" tradition to my house, that I will never be the crazy Santa Mom and that my children WILL NOT be spoiled at Christmas - instead they will understand the reason for the season and will grow up thinking of Christmas only as a time for family, friends and Jesus...... I can hear my sister laughing at me from across the pond. The elves and Santa came, spoiled the girls and left us in a flat full of toys.

The elves that spy on you arrived and were immediately loved by Avery. Max and Hero arrived in new places around the house each morning to spy on the girls and report back to Santa.

We wrapped up the key for Santa to get in our back door ( no easily-accessible fireplace in our flat)

 Left the key for Santa and veggies for Rudolph outside 

Under the tree went the plate of cookies for Santa ( Stella didn't like the fact that the fat guy in the suit got multiple cookies)

The girls under the tree in their Christmas jammies

 Santa came!!!

 Favorite gifts

The holiday was magical for us all, but now is the aftermath. Avery is disappointed daily when she wakes up to find an empty room and keeps asking why Santa didn't come. Stella is constantly annoyed that Avery has stolen all of her gifts ( yes, even the Dinosaur pictured above), and Lane and I are sick of picking up all of the crap wonderfully generous gifts Santa left. We are still shoving our faces with as many sweets and junk food as possible in anticipation of that dreaded January 1st when we must give it all up.

Hoping your Christmas was as memorable as ours,

The Flood Family