Christmas

Although we wanted to head back to the states for Christmas, time for traveling and money kind of demanded that we spend it here. But we decided one Christmas with the two of us might be nice. We assumed we'd only have a few presents but ended up with a good pile of them. To start celebrating we went to Sendai, which is the big city of Northern Japan, for some Christmas light viewing and spend time with some BYUH friends. Christmas eve day we went to church, had some ward members come carol and then had another turkey dinner (with sushi as well) with our neighbors. Christmas day we slept in until 8:30 and then opened presents that we were grateful to have. Although there had been snow almost all month, it all but melted by the 25th and turned into the nicest day in months so we went for a walk and relaxed the rest of the day.

Thanksgiving

We were lucky enough to be able to do a somewhat traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year, though it was a few days late. We had to special order a lot of the food, but it all came together in the end. We had the meal with our neighbors the Yaguchis who were skeptical about eating turkey and how good it would be, as it was their first time eating turkey. So the following are pics of the meal. Note the use of chopsticks by our friends.

Patrick Santa

Believe it or not, this is Patrick dressed as Santa at the Kindergartener's culture festival. Neither of us knew what the santa costume looked like beforehand, and when I saw him come out dressed like that I couldn't stop laughing. It was really the funniest santa costume I have ever seen. The head was enormous! Patrick said he couldn't really hear or see out of it either, so it made for an interesting and funny experience.