It's awfully hard to want to "get going" and leave your house when it's freezing outside. To be fair, it's pretty cold in here, too, because our heating bill for the last couple months was too much of a monstrosity to keep the heating on during the day, and we all wisely thought that would be good for us, and make us stay on campus and get work done instead of staying in the house.

I posted some pictures on flickr of our house Christmas celebration last night. Since this is only the second week of school, up until now everyone has been on and off at home or traveling or in different places, so last night was the first night we all were at home together at the same time. We each made something different for our Christmas dinner, so we had a massive slab of pork (everyone but me, that is), yorkshire puddings (not really a pudding at all), roasted parsnips and carrots, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, and cauliflower and cheese. Stef made this fantastic banana-cream-and-yogurt dessert that we ate while we played the game of Life (a gift from Stef to the whole house) after we opened our stockings. We got each other cheap, silly little things, but we had fun playing with them. Someone got silly string, someone else got handfuls of temporary tattoos, and all sorts of little things. I think this was the better Christmas since it was with people that I love and consider close, so I'm happy with my combined Christmas experiences. And lucky to get 2 English Christmases this winter!

The bigger deal is that because it's been too cold for the snow to melt, and since it keeps snowing here and there, we had a WHITE CHRISTMAS last night! It felt wonderful and perfect -- until the children from next door wouldn't stop pelting our front windows and door with snowballs. They're saucy little kids, and Amlyn had to open the door and ask them to stop, but they just threw snowballs at him. We're all actually a little afraid of them, and whenever we've left the house, they've tried to hit us with snowballs.

Merry Christmas in February!