Chris and Regina's Christmas

Whew! That went by in a hurry. On Christmas Eve, we spent the day packing for our trip to England. Around 2:30, Regina headed off to church for the family service. I stayed home and made dinner, and when she got back around 6:00 we sat down to eat our modest recreation of her family's traditional Christmas Eve dinner. I am what you might call a highly literal chef: Even though there were only two of us at the table, I still prepared the entire frozen batch of manicotti and an entire loaf of garlic bread. I was so focused on trying to get everything done that I didn't really stop to think about how much food I was making! At any rate, here is Regina sitting down to enjoy the meal on our brand new Christmas dishes -- with lovely pitcher, sugar bowl, and creamer from Kim! -- before we opened our presents and headed off to the late Christmas Eve service.

The late service started at 10:00 (I sang in the choir and Regina helped lead the service), and we didn't get home until almost 1 a.m. Early Christmas morning, we cleaned up the kitchen, loaded the car, and hit the road to New Jersey, arriving around one in the afternoon -- just in time to open presents and head to her aunt's for the Laba Christmas dinner.

On Wednesday we repacked and got ready for our early morning flight to London on Thursday. I won't try to describe our full England adventure just yet, but here are a handful of pictures of us across the pond.

You might say that we focused on churches and cathedrals. Here I am outside Wells Cathedral, which has a wonderful facade chock full of sculptures. We also visited cathedrals in Winchester, Salisbury, and London, and smaller churches related to Regina's Ph.D. in Bemerton and Little Gidding.

Oxford, as you can imagine, was a real high point for me: Here I am in the nook of a pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends used to hang out, surrounded by mementos of their literary circle, pretending I'm waiting for them all to arrive. You can tell I'm pretending because my eyes are closed! The pub is called The Eagle and Child, but Lewis and Tolkien liked to call it the Bird and Baby.

And here's Regina in London!

On our last morning in England, we climbed to the whispering gallery in St Paul's Cathedral in London, very s-l-o-w-l-y, marveled at the fact that you really can whisper to the person on the opposite end of the cathedral dome, and then agreed that England had worn us out. We can't wait to go back -- but somehow I think it may be a while!

I'll post a photo or two from Regina's ordination last weekend as soon as I can. We only got back to Massachusetts Tuesday night, then hurried to try to get our house ready for visiting friends and family, and enjoyed a whirlwind weekend of events and guests through Sunday afternoon. And then we slept. And slept. And were grateful that a snowstorm shut down the city today so we could catch our breath.

Happy new year!