Christmas

This is as good as it gets for kids over seas...Ghetto-Claus. It's a far cry from the guy they have at Provo Town Center, but hey, Santa's all about a kid's imagination and the magic of Christmas, right? We're at the "mall" they have on the base in Mildenhall. The one good thing they had was a very talented balloon artist... Britty, our little angel... Tarah and Eliza got flowers with bubble-like stuff coming out of the middle... and Brandon got an alien hitchhiker. Christmas morning!!! The kids got a lot of clothes. This is Brandon's favorite shirt, it has the solar system on it. Sweet Tarah with a painting set from Grandma and Grandpa Bear (I think). Britty opening a box with clothes in it. She is wearing a new church dress that was supposed to be a Christmas present but Brandon opened the package it was in (it came in the mail several days before Christmas) and said, "Oh, hey Brit, mama got you a new dress." Eliza opening...I don't know...clothes probably! This was several days after Christmas, about an inch of snow fell and they had a ton of fun while it lasted (which wasn't long). I didn't get pictures of my Christmas present, which would have been hard to photograph anyhow (two women caught up in a shopping frenzy). I got to go to London and go shopping with a girlfriend. We left in the morning, shopped all day, stopped at a pub for a proper English dinner of Bangers and Mash (English sausages and mashed potatoes with a red wine gravy), and then home. It was amazing. I got tons of clothes and had an unforgetable time. The only thing I couldn't find were shoes. Not because there were no shoe stores, there were plenty, it's just that European shoes are SOOOOO ugly!!! I'm not kidding! I must have looked in eight shoe stores, high end ones at that, and I was thoroughly disappointed. So a word to the future tourist, don't come expecting to find great shoes. I have bought a pair of Doc Marten's while I've been here, but I got them on Ebay from America...no European shoes for me until they look more like American shoes.