We Wish You a Merry Christmas

We had an absolutely fantastic Christmas here in Fukuyama. I will be putting up pictures of our revelry as soon as I figure out how to get them off of my phone. Unfortunately, our camera, which has been taking terrible pictures from day one, is slowly becoming only able to take pictures that are not much better than a daguerrotype. A recent addition to its ineptitude is the inability to flash or focus on anything even remotely resembling a subject. The photos are usually blurry and hazy unless the subject is completely still, which I am pretty sure my children are incapable of. I have a deep and complex relationship of dislike and betrayal with this camera, which, as you can see, is turning into semi-psycotic anthropomorphising on my part. We finally gave up on the camera on Christmas Eve and opted for taking photos with the only slightly better cell phone camera. In case you are wondering why we bought such a terrible camera in the first place, we didn't. It was given to us as a replacement when our previous camera (which took decent photos) had electrical problems. Sigh.

Parliament of owls with Theo in background

Last week, Theo's kindergarten had a Christmas presentation. It was held at the Reed and Rose Arena, our city's concert hall, and included two plays and multiple songs played on the melodica. Theo and the rest of the children in the youngest kindergarten class performed a really cute but random play. The premise was as follows: All of the animals of the forest are gathered together because they have found a secret cave. A few animals enter it to explore and come out claiming to have seen great sights. They tell all of the animals to go in and see for themselves, but the foxes are too afraid to enter. It takes the rhetoric of the wise owls to persuade the foxes. After all of the animals enter the cave, they discover that it is a magical portal to the North Pole where they meet Santa, his reindeer, and elves. Santa then proceeds to take them for a ride in his sleigh and give them each a present.

Sucking on his paws

The amazing part about this play was that there was about 80 children on stage at one point. Nobody burst out crying, ran off the stage, or hurt themselves. I didn't think that it was possible to avoid at least a couple of incidents over the course of 15 minutes with that many 3-4 year olds, but somehow they pulled it off. Theo played the part of a wolf and looked incredibly bored the whole time. He spent the better part of the play looking everywhere but forward, pulling at his sleeves, and yawning. If you are wondering which one is Theo in these pictures, just look for the most distracted, glazed expression and it is bound to be him.

Studying the floor

Here is a video of the kids with Theo in front and center singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". The video was cut short by William who decided to burst into tears halfway through the song. 

Any advice on what we should get to replace our excuse of a camera?