Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas everyone!

I've found a new and quicker way to do photos so sorry for the hassel, but to check out the Xmas selection please follow this link:

http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/Gdoggystink/Christmas#

(my wife came up with the name... something to do with my socks???) and you can see the lovely dinner Itsuki and I made.

We actually "made" our entire dinner in less than 45 minutes. Which of course would have been impossible without going to the local Brazilian international store to get a pre-roasted chicken (in Japan it's either this or KFC). I was actually seriously considering trying to cook a turkey myself this year, but... when we got to the store at 11am on Christmas day (and yes the 25th is not a holiday here so all stores are open) the only uncooked birds I could find were all frozen... that I had forgotten to factor in... and so my turkey cooking ambitions will have to wait one more year.

Our Christmas was a little nutty this year anyway. Santa didn't come until 5pm, because that's the earliest that Itsuki's mom could make it here from her hometown. Also, we didn't actually do half of the decorations for our house until the morning of the 25th. Making the matter even sadder was that when the 26th rolled around, all of the decorations came down because... we had to do it when we could (expecting a baby anytime now) and if we passed up this opportunity, we might still have lights up come mid March.

But all that aside, Fuzu had a great time! He loved the idea of socks containing presents, and of ripping paper apart to find goodies inside. His reaction was usual one of two. If the contents were clothes, he would look at them for 1 second, say "iranai" (don't need this) and then move to the next present. If that next present happened to be a toy... he would forget about all the other presents completely and we would have to drag him back to open another one.

It certainly was one of my funnest Christmass and I finally understand why my own mother never put her camera down on Christmas day when we were kids.