Christmas Jackpot!!

Christmas this year was low key, but we really enjoyed ourselves. It was our first Christmas away from family, and even though we missed our families, we enjoyed having time to spend just focusing on the kids.

So what is Christmas like in Japan??? Surprisingly, there were tons of decorations and lights out in town. It was also kind of funny because we heard American Christmas music in a lot of restaurants and stores when we were there. I guess it goes to show that Christmas is everywhere!! I did have a little bit of a hard time because it didn't feel like Christmas, despite all the lights. First off, the weather has been very mild (60's), secondly, I missed going to see Santa, going to see huge displays of lights, Christmas shopping in the stores, etc. We ended up doing most of our shopping online.

Christmas Eve we had a lot of fun. We invited over one of our JAG friends who is single. She is from New Mexico and every Christmas Eve they had tamales and posole (authentic Mexican). So that is what we made and it tasted very good. After we put the kids in bed, we stayed up and played games.

Christmas morning, I think I was more excited for the kids to open their presents than they were. Our kids are SOOOOO spoiled. They have great grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins that love them. In fact, the kids got so many presents, that some of the ones we were going to give Ethan we decided to save until his birthday in a couple of weeks.

Here is a little slideshow of Christmas morning and all of the kids loot they scored!! We really had a very nice Christmas and are so blessed!!