Our First British Christmas and Nora's First Birthday!

This was our first Christmas away from our families and we certainly did miss them. Hopefully we'll be with family once again next year. But Oxford offers a lot to a couple of Americans far from home and we enjoyed our first British Christmas!
On Christmas Eve we went to a Nine Lessons and Carols service at Christ Church Cathedral. It was such a treat! We were very fortunate to get tickets that someone had returned at the last minute. We got all dressed up for the occasion and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings of the old cathedral and the performance of the Cathedral Choir. You'll see a bit of video and pictures that don't even come close to doing it justice (nor does our poor audio recording) but you'll get a bit of a taste! If you're ever in Oxford, you'll want to visit this place.
Another place to visit is the Oxford Covered Market. ...cobblestone floors, old lampposts and loads of shops and vendors of all sorts. Around Christmas it looks as though it is something out of a Dickens novel!
Christmas morning we spent at home as a family. Ben made delicious homemade cinnamon rolls and bacon and eggs and we watched Nora open some gifts. Then in the afternoon we went out to a small village called Cuddington to spend the rest of the day with some people from our church. We went on a walk (called a 'ramble' here) from Cuddington to the next village and explored the church there as well. It was amazingly picturesque and a beautifully sunny (but cold) afternoon.
That night we enjoyed a traditional English Christmas dinner including the Christmas pudding lit on fire! To us it tasted about as good as it looks (you'll see it in the video) but the Brits all seemed to LOVE it. Go figure. We learned a new British word that night too. More-ish. It's an adjective. Something is more-ish if you would want more of it sometime soon. I would say that for me, Christmas pudding is not more-ish.

Christmas in Oxford:


This was Nora's first Christmas (at 364 days old!) and her first birthday was the next day! We've clipped together a few videos and pictures of her from Christmas and the little birthday party we threw together. It would have been nice to be in Oregon celebrating with Nora's grandparents and most of her aunts and uncles. We don't really know anyone all that well in Oxford having only been here for a few months but it was nice that some people we've recently met came to help us mark the occasion and now we know them a bit better! We couldn't really have fit any more people into the flat (there were 14 of us in one small room!)
Nora had a banana cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting and really seemed to like it! You'll see.
It's hard to believe that we survived a whole year of parenthood! It feels like such an accomplishment for all 3 of us! We are immensely in love with our sweet girl and can't wait to see what the next year holds! We love you Nora.