Bananarama!

Jefferson and I spent a quiet Christmas at home this year and had a wonderful time. We even got into the British ways of having Christmas pudding and it was disgusting but I'm glad we did it.  It's like a gelatin mass of fruit cake that sometimes has liquor and you sometimes light on fire. Which we didn't (maybe next year).

Our adorable tree.

Xmas "pudding"

Then Banana came to town - my roommate for all four years at Kenyon. Her name is Anna, but I call her Banana, and we had suuuuch a great time.

First we celebrated New Years together along with the Wild's and other awesome folks. We played a hilarious ring toss game involving blow up reindeer antlers, which I didn't want to take off for the rest of the night.

We went to afternoon tea twice - each one was awesome. The first was Science tea (SCIENCE!). It was near the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum so the theme was fitting and hilarious. The desserts were all shaped like dinosaurs or planets or astronauts, and the scones were delicious. We also went to the always amazing Fortnum & Mason tea in the Diamond Jubilee room - my personal favorite. So tasty, so pretty - and bottomless scones, desserts and mini sandwiches. NOM. Wait, we did it three times if I count the super cute tea room in Edinburgh that we went to. You can never have too much tea! Or scones. Or cake.

Scottish Tea!

SCIENCE! tea

We went to so very many museums. Banana went to even more without me, but together I'm pretty sure we saw every museum Edinburgh has to offer on our short trip to Scotland. Banana is not one to pass up anything at museums that say, "try this on to see how people dressed way back when...". 

We also did a bunch of things I've always wanted to do here but never got around to - like the Sky Gardens on top of the walkie-talkie building here, going to the Greenwich Observatory and Planetarium, or having a pint at the Plume of Feathers pub near Greenwich park (it was everything I wanted it to be - cozy, cute, good beers and chips). SO FUN.

We Moved! Then went to Sweden! Then the states!

We moved one whole building over. So same complex, but different apartment layout. It's awesome! If you need the address, just email us.  Big/good differences: our deck is now three times larger (awesome), our kitchen is open to the main living room (also awesome), and instead of a diagonal hallway and weirdly shaped rooms, everything is now nice and square and the use of the space is fantastic (awesome-est). Our view of the Thames is also a bit cooler because we can see all of Canary Wharf and we can see the curve in the river.

Foggy Morning

Not so foggy

  

We also traveled to Sweden with the Wild's at the beginning of December to check out some Christmas markets! It was very fun but VERY cold. One might say bitterly cold.

The main Christmas market we ventured to was a bit hard to find and was smack in the middle of one of those old towns where they recreate scenes from the past like, "check out what Christmas would have been like for this family in the 1920's!". Not an exciting kind of town, but the market was cute.

    

Vasa Museum!

Best cookies! NOM

Smallest Gluhwein

Then in mid-December we went to the states to see everyone for the pre-holidays. Chicago first, where it felt just as bitterly cold as Sweden, but it was a great trip. We had all the mac and cheese (all of it) with my volleyball team, Rocko surprised us again (awesome), AND we finally got to go to Helen and Paul's Champagne party extravaganza - here's my favorite pic of that.

Then we finally warmed up in Arizona and got to hang with family before heading back to ol'London town.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 2016 was a stone cold beast and I'm looking forward to what will hopefully be a much nicer 2017. WAHOO!