I have to apologize. My emails aren’t near as fun as they were last year. Guess that means we have truly settled here. Not all bad, just not as entertaining…
Christmas Eve I was helping Caden into bed. He said in the most serious three-year-old voice, “We don’t have a chimney. That’s a problem.” I assured him it would be okay. Thankfully he accepted that.
I’ve never been comfortable promoting Santa to my kids. Just my personal conviction, I’m not judging anyone who disagrees. I don’t mind playing along with the fantasy, but I prefer to keep Christ in the forefront as He is the source of all our gifts.
However, here in Japan, Christmas is void of religion and is only about Santa and gifts. Caden has had much more Santa influence than Nathan ever did especially in preschool. They talked a lot about Santa in school during December. This being said, I wasn’t about to broach the “Santa is just pretend” subject with Caden for obvious reasons. One, he is only three! The other, getting in an argument with him is pointless. Let me illustrate…
A few weeks ago I got sucked into an argument with him about the pronunciation of his friend’s name, Ethan. He insisted it was “Nethan”. After five minutes of “Ethan. No Nethan. No, Caden, it’s EEETHAN. No, it’s NEEETHAN, “ I realized there appeared to be no way out. Grasping for any logic, I finally said, “The “N” is silent. It’s pronounced, “Ethan”.” Caden said, “You mean, “Eeethan”? Oh, okay.” Ahhhhhhhhhhh! It only took a few hours and he was back to saying “Nethan”. The teenage years should be fun. Sadly, now Ethan’s mom even calls him “Nethan” because we’ve all heard it so much!
Unfortunately Nathan stayed true to his “only gets sick during school vacation” tradition. So far all of the five school breaks he’s had since we moved here he has had some sort of illness. We had planned to go to Hiroshima but the evening before he came down with the stomach flu. Not fun.
Overall the boys seemed to enjoy Christmas #2 here in Japan. With Nathan being sick we didn’t go anywhere. By the time he had fully recovered and we were fairly certain no one else was going to catch it all the places we tried to visit were closed for the New Year’s holiday (12/28-1/2). However, down time with just the family, not all bad!
We enjoyed New Year’s Eve with friends. Would have gotten a sitter for Caden, had we known about the party when the original invitations were sent. Turns out two weeks prior my friend emailed our invitation to another Katrina on her email list. Unfortunately that Katrina is her realtor in North Carolina. My friend didn’t realize the mistake until she was looking back through the invite list. There were plenty of older kids there so Nathan was upset because we had to leave before midnight. Caden was upset too, but was asleep five minutes after we got home. In case you are wondering, the other Katrina didn’t make it.
On January 2, Darin and I went to dinner at our Japanese friend’s house for a “New Year’s Dinner”, customary in the Japanese culture. Kenzo and Teruko speak English pretty well. It is awesome to experience the Japanese culture with real Japanese people, in a real Japanese home. Believe it or not, it is very easy to live our own lives separate from the Japanese. We have access to enough western things that sometimes I forget we live here.
The dinner was completely Japanese. Kenzo wasn’t too thrilled. He doesn’t like Japanese food. No kidding. He likes American food. I told them we will have them over for dinner so he can have a fattening, unhealthy American meal.
Darin started back to work January 5. Caden returned to school January 7. Nathan just returned to school January 13!! That was a loooooong break (Dec 18-Jan 13). Because his school is an international school most everyone returns home or vacations in another country during the holidays. That is why there is a week-long spring and fall break and school isn’t out for the summer until mid-June!
Nathan was all bundled up with his backpack strapped on, ready to walk out the door for the first day back to school and he said, “I don’t know if I remember where I sit”. As I pushed him out the door I assured him he would remember when he got there. He did.
Yesterday it SNOWED!! I’m sure none of you are even remotely interested in hearing about snow. But it SNOWED!! Big, fluffy, white flakes! It was awesome. Of course none of it stuck. I did get a video clip of the flurries. That will probably be all the snow we see this year unless anyone is kind enough to freeze some until we return in June.
Wish you all blessings for 2010!
Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu! (Happy New Year!)
