Here’s a wrap-up of the special meals we’ve enjoyed this holiday season, beginning with Thanksgiving, and going through the end of Christmas (Epiphany)!
Thanksgiving:
The Christmas Tea (our one luncheon feast):
Christmas Eve (appetizers, dips, and desserts):
The English Christmas Feast:
New Year’s Day:
Epiphany (aka Ryan’s birthday)–a mini-Thanksgiving, with birthday cake for dessert:
The time of feasting is over, for a while at least. I am working on a plan for a Valentine’s Day tea, though!
It’s a good thing there are twelve days of Christmas to celebrate…that means I’m not lying when I say we’re having a “White Christmas!”
On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional dinner of appetizers, dips, and desserts. Christmas Day ended being a little funky, meal-wise, so we ordered pizzas. Our big, fancy Christmas dinner was finally enjoyed today! I chose an English theme (since this has been a major “Rule Britannia” year for us), and the menu I settled up on included roast beef, brussels sprouts (a very important Christmas dinner staple in England), roast carrots and potatoes, cranberries, and, for dessert, a French cake popular in England, the Bûche de Noël or Yule Log Cake. We also enjoyed drinking wassail, which is another of our regular family Christmas traditions, but fit in nicely with the theme for the day!
Wassail, hot out of the pot:
Standing rib roast with a rosemary-garlic rub, served with a horseradish cream sauce:
A trio of roast vegetables–brussels sprouts, carrots, and potatoes:
Spiced cranberries:
The feast:
The table:
Christmas Crackers:
In addition to a paper hat, everyone’s Christmas Cracker came with a toy:
As well a joke:
The Bûche de Noël:
Happy Christmas!
Chickadee has had a very busy week, obviously. First Christmases are very fun! She got this outfit from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas, and I think it’s one of my favorite baby outfits ever!
I especially love the ruffles on the backside!
She’s really into playing “so big” right now. It’s hard to catch a picture of it, though, because she makes you wait when you ask her how big she is before she’ll put her hands up, and then she puts them back down as soon as she sees the camera!
Christmas week is very tiring!
Snuggling with Daddy before bed.
This sleeper has become something of a family heirloom. All of our children except Moose have worn it on their first Christmas (Moose was only about six weeks old for his first Christmas, so he had his own, very small, “My First Christmas” sleeper). They ranged in age from five months to over nine months when wearing it, so it fit different children differently. I was a little concerned that it wouldn’t fit Chickadee (it barely fit Turkey, but it was the largest size available), but it snapped up with minimal straining. It is a maddening piece of clothing, because it snaps down the back, which makes getting it on and changing diapers exercises in frustration, but it’s also extraordinarily cute and soft, and babies tend to look like a candy cane in it, so the aggravation is well worth it!
This is one of those pieces of clothing that I’ll never give away, and should any of our children ever want to use it for their own children in the future, it will be here, just waiting to celebrate another first Christmas!
The number one lesson Chickadee learned this Christmas? Presents are very fun to eat!
This is the look I received from Ladybug last night, after telling her I wanted to take a picture of her standing up in her costume, instead of her kneeling in an attempt to look holy:
This may be my favorite Christmas picture of them all!
While taking pictures of the children in their snazzy Christmas apparel, Ryan tried a few shots with the camera’s flash on. This was not a popular decision with the children (especially Bunny!), as is evidenced by the resulting photos!
Ladybug was so excited to finally have her turn at playing Mary in the church Christmas program!
