Christmas traditions

One of the traditions here is "Christmas crackers. I got my pictures out of order a bit, but if you scroll down you can see what they look like. They range from shiny and decorative to childlike. When the "cracker" is pulled, it makes a popping sound and then it opens and has prizes inside. The kids were good sports and let me take a picture of them modeling the tissue paper hats that came as a prize. Other prizes included jokes and little toys or games.

When in Rome....

We try to participate as much as possible in village life so the kids get the whole English experience. Most villages in England have a big church, even if the village is small. It is kind of odd since the British people as a whole don't seem to be terribly religious. Our village is very small, but has a good sized church that dates back to the 14th century. We were curious to see what it looked like on the inside, so when we got a notice through our door that they were having a Christmas Eve service, we decided to give it a try.

It turned out to be a Church of England, candlelit, Eucharist service. It was an interesting service - quite different from our own. Afterwards they served mince pie (a sweet pie served at Christmas and New Years made from a preserve of apples and raisins) and sherry or juice for the children. We chose the juice option :) I don't know if we will go again next year, but it was an interesting experience.

Winter weather

Okay, this does not feel like England anymore. It has been snowing all day with big, huge snowflakes. These aren't very good pictures, but you will get the idea :) The kids are playing out in the front yard. The snow has not slowed down the village at all though. The villagers, including us, are still walking into town, doing everything they usually do. We walked to town, went to the card shop and the post office, got a steak and kidney pie from the butcher and then stopped by the nice pub down from our house to warm up and get a hot dessert.

Snow Day

Snow is pretty rare in this part of the country, so when it does snow it is a big deal. We only had about three inches, but everything shuts down. Ken didn't have to go to work and they closed all the schools in the area. The kids are ecstatic to have Christmas break start a day early instead of having tests today.

Thanksgiving

Long story, but we had quite the crowd for Thanksgiving. We ended up having 23 people including ourselves - way more than I've ever hosted before. We had wall to wall people. We even had Brittany and her friends sitting in the back entrance. We had an interesting mix of people. We had friends from California, Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and Oregon as well as England, Scotland, New Zealand (Maori) and our friend who is a Native American from the Hopi tribe.

Mission call

We had an exciting Thanksgiving this year. Just before we got ready to sit down to eat dinner we got a call from Jeffrey in Utah. He had the family gathered together there and was getting ready to open his call. I don't know how he managed to wait to open it. He found it in the mail the night before, but waited till everyone was together before opening it.

He had a phone held up to each ear - a three way call with us and Ken's parents and a call to Kenny in Pullman in the other ear. He is going to the Chile Concepcion South mission and will be entering the Provo MTC on February 10th. I was so excited that I just wanted to tell our guests that Thanksgiving was cancelled. We had more important things to think about :)

ROTC competition

We went to an interesting event last weekend. Stuart is participating in the ROTC drill team and color guard this year and they had a competition with another DoDEA (Department of Defense something something) school. There were several different events where they had to march in formation, do routines with rifles etc. It reminded me a bit of District III marching band, without the music.

Stuart's team did very well, taking top honors thoughout. The most exciting part came at the end though. Both teams were out on the floor and a sergeant was calling out commands. None of this had been rehearsed, and they had to execute each command perfectly. There were several judges walking among them and as soon as anyone made the smallest mistake they were tapped out and asked to leave the floor. The kids got eliminated pretty quickly and soon there were only four left, then three. These were kids who had been in for three or four years and and had done a fabulous job in the other competitions. We were so excited to see that Stuart was still out on the floor, one of the three. The three eventually became two: a third year student (who had trained Stuart) and Stuart, the first year cadet. Then there was one ......... STUART!!!!! We were so excited that we forgot to take pictures at the end :) What a way to make a name for yourself at a new school :)