Christmas 2014

We really love Christmas around our house and do our best to make it traditional and festive for ourselves as well as the kids. This requires a little bit more effort on our part since we live in a country where basically all Christmas amounts to is seeing really badly decorated trees, eating fried chicken and tasteless cake, and hearing Wham's "Last Christmas" played a million times.

Two years ago we bought a large artificial tree (well, large for Japanese standards since the trees here are usually only about a meter tall) and the kids "helped" set it up at the beginning of December. We spent a few days in December whipping off batches of cookies in our new oven. In previous years I had been baking cookies 6 at a time in our tiny microwave/oven combo and it took me forever to get any amount of cookies baked. It was wonderful to have 4x the baking capacity this year!

We also went to a few Christmas parties in the middle part of December which were kind of hectic but fun for the kids.

William, who I think was intending on a peace sign, at the Fukuyama Foreign Association Christmas party

Rosie checking out the little tree at our church Christmas party

Opening a present from Santa at the church Christmas party

Winter break began for the kids and I on December 22nd. Dustin's winter holidays usually only begin around the 28th, but he always takes at least Christmas day off. We spent the days before Christmas going on exploratory bike rides, going to a train show, and trying to keep warm.

Checking out Bingo Honjo station from the wrong side of the tracks

William the conductor

Playing with electric trains

An exceedingly hairy looking Dustin and a rare Fukuyama snow.

Here's my little bit of whining: I managed to feel sick on and off all winter break. All I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep off the headaches, congestion and coughing but a mother doesn't exactly have the luxury of being out of commission during the holidays. Instead I just went through the motions in a kind of a sickly daze and hoped that everyone was enjoying themselves more than me. Dustin was nice enough to wake up at the crack of dawn with Rosie every day so that I could get an hour or two more sleep each morning.

On Christmas Eve we brought the kids to the zoo only to find out that they were randomly closed for the day. There is an awesome playground next to the zoo so we just let the kids spend the afternoon running around there instead. Compared to some of the seriously sketchy playgrounds in our area this one is amazing.

いないないばあ!

William on a classic rolly tube slide

And Rosie watching

I am not sure if this will become a permanent family tradition for us, but for the last few years we have designated Christmas Eve as our Japanese Christmas dinner day and Christmas Day as the typical western holiday cuisine day. Last year we had nabe on Christmas Eve this year we went all out with fried chicken, pizza, and the best part of Christmas cake: strawberries. 

The children then spent the rest of the evening decorating sugar cookies for Santa and writing a letter to go with them.

Cookie decorating time

They got jealous of Santa's spread and needed their own glass of milk and cookies before going to bed

Once the kids were asleep we finished up a bit of wrapping and pulled the presents from their hiding places to go under the tree. 

 And the next morning:

William showing off the book given to him by his kindergarten.

Theo helping Rosie open up her present.

William and his walkie talkie with ecstatic Theo in the background.

 I spent the rest of the day in a sick but industrious cloud baking a turkey and pies, making stuffing mashed potatoes, and all the lovely veggies.

This was just the beginning of our holidays and I will hopefully find the time to write about the rest of it soon. I also noticed that there were no pictures of Bosco or me from Christmastime, and since this post is so picture heavy already, here is a token selfie and a cute picture of our lavender pooch soaking in some winter sunshine.

Christmas 2012

The turning of the year is always a really busy time for our family. I know this is true for almost everyone, but with Christmas, Dustin's birthday on December 30th, New Year's, and Theo's birthday on January 2nd, I really feel the pressure.

Despite the extra effort, Dustin and I really love Christmas and try our best to make it a magical holiday for our children as well. It is still a bit strange being in a country where you have to work on Christmas, it is more of a date night than a family holiday, and the normal traditions include eating fried chicken and cake. Dustin took Christmas Day off from work so that he could spend it with us and the next day everyone at his school asked if he had been sick. They had all completely forgotten that Christmas was on the 25th!

Last year we borrowed a little tree from our neighbours who were out of the country. This year we finally decided to get a tree of our own and ordered one online. Yes, it is artificial, but it is 1.8 meters tall and not the little miniature trees that are usually for sale here. I just love the cozy atmosphere that comes from setting up a glowing Christmas tree. After about a day or two of having his hands slapped, William finally caught on that the goal was not to tear the decorations and lights off every time he saw it.

Theo dictated a letter to Santa and then wrote both his and his brother's name on the bottom so he could leave it next to Santa's snack of cookies and milk. I am not sure why William looks so depressed in this photo. Maybe he is having last minute worries about whether his behaviour this past year got him into Santa's good books.

To prevent the children from pestering us about presents or tearing into them before Christmas morning, we always hide them away until they go to sleep on Christmas Eve. Here is our tree after the presents have been pulled from their hidey holes and placed under the tree for discovery the next morning.

Theo had a lot of fun impersonating Santa and William added a new word to his vocabulary: "Ho, Ho, Ho!".

Christmas morning was full of smiles, noise, and energy

which quickly turned to quiet, absorbed playtime with new toys

We invited our friends who have become the children's Japanese grandma and grandpa (obaasan and ojiisan) to enjoy the day with us. This was their first time to experience a typical western style celebration of Christmas. 

After a fun morning of presents, apple cider, and playing we had a wonderful Christmas dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, veggies, and pumpkin pie. It was a very relaxed and wonderful day. 

Celebrations

Normally Dustin would not get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off of work, but this year both fell on a weekend so we were able to really relax and enjoy ourselves. We were also lucky enough to be able to borrow our neighbours Christmas tree, since they would be visiting family in the U.S. during Christmas. We decided against setting it up in advance, since we knew that William is old enough now to be facinated with it and try to grab every he can get his grubby fingers on, but not old enough to understand the word "no".  Instead, we decided to ask Santa Claus to bring a decorated tree when he came to drop off presents.

On Christmas Eve, we decided to try out our new nabe pot. Nabe is a Japanese dish where you heat broth and cook vegetables, meat, and seafood in it at the table. It was a warming and delicious meal which both boys managed to sleep though which was a bonus for Dustin and me. After, Theo woke up and had some leftovers, we helped him write a long letter to Santa, thanking him for the presents and telling him where to put the tree, and put out a plate of milk and cookies. After the kids were in bed, the real fun began. The tree was set up, stockings stuffed, and presents pulled from our many hiding spots.

The next morning, Theo was wide eyed and impressed with Santa's magical skills and we had a fun filled time opening gifts and chatting with family on Skype. It is amazing how quiet and well behaved kids can be when they have a few new toys to occupy them. This was the most laid back and relaxed Christmas that I have had in many years. There weren't multiple, large family gatherings to run back and forth to and only enough presents to make our kids happy and grateful, not unappreciative, greedy monsters.

Yesterday, we also celebrated Dustin's 32nd birthday. He didn't have to work, since the New Year's holidays started on December 29th. Here's hoping that the next year brings him lots of laughs, growth, peace, and happiness.

As an ode to Dustin over the years, here are a few rarely seen photos of him, most showing his amazing and very varied facial hair styles. Thank goodness that he feels socially obligated to remain clean shaven now!

There are a few things in life that Dustin truly appreciates: Mac products,

history,

building and paddling kayaks,

eating good sushi and experimenting with ridiculous facial hair, 

brewing and drinking quality beer,

ensuring Canada's safety while wearing gloves called "The Friskmaster 2000", 

a challenging bike ride or hike,

and most of all, his family.

We love you Dustin!

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?