A Great Christmas Eve

We will be in Canada for December 25, so we decided we'd have an early Christmas morning for just the 3 of us. We hadn't hammered down the date yet, and yesterday when we were on the train to London, I said to Matthew, "Let's do it tomorrow!!" So, BOOM, December 10 became New Christmas Eve! We were instantly excited and had a kind of nervous energy all day. It was so much fun.

We were on the train to London to meet up with our friends Alex & Naomi. Naomi works for the St Johns Hospice,  in North London. They were having a Christmas fair as a fundraiser, and we decided to go down and check it out. It was great timing to go to a Christmassy event on New Christmas Eve! There was face-painting, an inside, man-made skating rink (sorry folks, it's still waaaay too warm here for a real one), a giant snowglobe, and some great market stalls. The Lord Mayor of Westminster came, so Naomi had to do a lot of ooh-ing and ahh-ing, and photo-op-ing.

Santa Claus himself was there for Elizabeth to meet. Naomi did let it slip that their scheduled Santa had called in sick the morning of the event, so they had a stand-in. . . we were glad to find out that this guy's costume had been cobbled together that morning. He was an awesome Santa - his beard, sadly, was not.

It was a pretty warm day, so we were comfortable spending most of the afternoon outside. It was so weird to be outside for hours in December, and not be in full snow-gear. This is one of my favourite pictures of my two favourite people.

After the fair, we decided to go to Harrod's, because there is no better way to get in the Christmas spirit than to go to a huge department store with a massive Christmas section - aptly titled, Christmas World. Alex came with us, and in his own words, "was as overwhelmed as Elizabeth". She was dazzled. We let her walk about, and we're pretty sure she touched every single ornament. I was also caught up, and bought these four cute ornaments. These four little Harrods bears cost more than our entire tree and all the other decorations. Whoopsies.

When we left, it was already dark out and Elizabeth was stunned by the lights.This is what she saw:

and this is what she looked like:

She was such a good girl all day, and we didn't get home until really late - we magically missed two fast trains, and had to take the longest train in the world. You know how that goes. But even on the train, she was just floppy and tired, but didn't fuss or cry. I guess she was holding it all inside, because while Matthew & I were wrapping & getting ready for Christmas day:

 Elizabeth puked in her bed. Poor baby!! The excitement was just too much for her. It's a little bit reminiscent of her first birthday in London. . . Believe it or not, it was our first bed + puke experience, but luckily she went right back to sleep in a fresh bed.

We had a great New Christmas Eve - it is so much fun to be spontaneous!