More Christmas madness

I know this post is little late but I wanted to record some more of the differences in Christmas traditions between the US and Oz.

1. It's cold (duh!)


2. Christmas tree decorations must be colour co-ordinated (all red, all silver, all green etc)


3. Every family bakes hundreds of Christmas cookies to give out to friends


4. When attending Christmas events (including church services near Christmas) it is compulsory to wear red or an appropriately designed Christmas themed sweater


5. Most houses are decorated with either a wreath on every window of their house (our neighbour has 15 wreathes with red ribbons on his house not including the front door) or a battery lit candle in every window (said neighbour has these as well)


6. The lyrics to 'Let it snow' make sense in Seattle - "Oh the weather outside is frightful"


7. Crackers are unusual to have at Christmas (mostly used at NYE)

Merry Christmas!

We have had a great Christmas season, our first here in the US. Upon returning from Seattle the first thing we did was buy a real North Carolina fir tree. It's different to Australian Christmas trees as it doesn't have a strong smell to it, which was a little disappointing. But to make up for this it is a very beautiful tree with short needles and sturdier branches. We all had a good time decorating it with lights, tinsel and red & blue decorations (that's another difference here - your tree decorations must be colour co-ordinated - no mixing of colours!)












During December we had an advent calendar that Lucy opened each day. She loved opening the little doors, unwrapping the tissue paper and then placing the object on the nativity scene. On Christmas Eve we attended a carols (by candlelight) service at church and then had dinner at Dean & Debbie's. The dinner was great - an informal gathering of friends for a meal complete with fireworks and carol singing around the piano (yes we are in America!)









Christmas Day was a luxurious sleep in until 9am followed by a pancake breakfast. Then we opened presents, had a light lunch and then napped again in the afternoon. We had an early dinner - the works with turkey, baked sweet potato casserole, apple sauce ande green beans followed by our birthday cake for Jesus. This year we had a non-traditional fruit cake with candied orange peel, chocolate covered almonds and golden raisins. The other main ingredient was egg whites so the cake itself was very light and very delicious as evidenced by Lucy in this video!

Weekend update

A couple of different things happened this weekend:



1. We became members of our new church (Northgrove EPC) - photo of the new members left. Sharon on the right is the teaching director at Community Bible Study that I attend. Pastor Gary is up the back with the maroon vest on.



2. We attended our first congregational meeting at Northgrove. Sadly it turns out that these meetings can be frustratingly the same anywhere around the world.



3. Andrew & I had dinner with some of the Silex crew at Paddy's Hollow to celebrate Richard's 50th birthday. We skipped the ghost tour which turned out to be a very good thing as we were able to stay warm and wait fro them to finish in the warmth of the pub!



4. I attended a Christmas Tea (making the faux pas of not dressing up in the Southern tradition of red, green or other Christmas colours - I wore my bright orange Berlin jacket without thinking!!! Luckily they are used to me being different!) The tea was complete with wedding china and spiced tea with lots of cake and sandwiches. We had a great talk about making Christmas 'real'



5. Lucy is still battling a cold/cough but continues to be a trooper.



6. The neighbours all put their Christmas lights up on Saturday 1 December. Three doors down rivals the Griswolds. We brought a couple of decorations with us (nativity scene and three wise men bobbleheads) and have bought a cool advent calendar. Probably going to keep things low key as we will be away for a week but when we get back we'll be buying a North Carolina Fraser Fir tree. Will keep you posted. Strangely Andrew is not concocting some elaborate scheme of lights but I think he is just living by our family motto of 'keeping it simple'.