All the Christmas stuff

Because I'm fairly bad at keeping this up to date in real time I am, once again, going backwards.  I haven't even finished updating this with November.  Maybe I'll skip November....

December started out with birthdays for Piper and Felicity.  Piper chose tacos and a reese's ice cream cake.  Felicity chose swimming at the New Sanno Hotel, pizza from dominos, and a strawberry ice cream cake.  I prepared early enough this year that I wasn't terribly stressed about getting two cakes made in one week.  

This year I tried to be mindful about what I decided to put my time and effort into.  We made a list the first week of December asking the kids what activities and traditions they would be sad to miss and then I just stuck to those things for our family.  I also added two trips to the temple, making eight (eight!!) dozen treats for a Christmas zone conference, and volunteering at Felicity's classroom to read a Christmas book.  I also enjoyed walking to Roppongi to see the Christmas lights with Mike and then walking to Omotosando with Isaac to drop off film, enjoying all the Christmas lights and fancy Christmas installations (Dior had a golden tree set up!). 

 I also agreed to sing a solo at church for Christmas Eve and it actually felt really special to me.  I went to the church to practice with the pianist before a baptism we were both attending and about thirty minutes before the baptism, the mom and daughter (who were both getting baptized) and two sets of missionaries came in quietly and sat to listen.  I normally get really nervous to sing in front of anyone but I felt really honored to play a part of their special day unexpectedly.  It was like a personal concert and I wasn't nervous at all.  The mom told me her name means "strong" in Chinese and she would pray for me to have strong courage on Sunday.  I looked for her in the audience while I sang and felt thankful for her prayers.  My heart rate was 113 (hahaha) so it's safe to say I didn't feel entirely calm but I delivered the message of the song and afterwards had people come to me in tears telling me how beautiful it was.  A few even told me it sounded "angelic" and one said she imagined I was one of the angels singing with the choir that announced Christ's birth.  Another friend said she felt she was sitting in the clouds and her only regret was not recording it.  So, I'm sharing that not to pat myself on the back, but rather to say that I think my Chinese friend's prayer worked and also, I felt honored to be blessed with a talent that allows me to help others feel the spirit.   

The kids wanted to make sure we had a hot chocolate bar so I delivered on that.  The girls wanted to sleep under the tree once school got out.  We also did our Christ-Centered Christmas dinner with Elder and Sister Yamada and a white elephant gift exchange.  Will always loved doing Secret Santa but Mike and Isaac strongly disliked that so this year with Will gone, I asked Isaac what he wanted to do and he suggested a white elephant exchange.  It was much easier and every one was happy.   

We skipped the ward Christmas breakfast so we could go to Eli's wrestling tournament at Camp Zama, an army base where Steve and Carol lived when they only had two kids and she was pregnant with Jessie.  it was fun to go see where they lived so many years ago.  It was an all day event but we all really enjoyed watching him.  I've never really understood the appeal of wrestling so I was surprised at how fun it was to watch.  Again, my heart rate recorded really high during his matches!  We took a break halfway through and got some shopping done and ate lunch.  It was a good outing. 

Of course, we did have some sickness.  Predictable.  Last year we were sick a lot because we could finally take off masks and Felicity picked up every single germ from her kindergarten class.  This year, I don't actually know why we keep getting sick, other than it seems to originate from Felicity once again.  She usually gets it first and then generously passes it to the rest of us.  I think we had Coivd this time, though, I never tested us.  Coughing, fevers, sore throat, stuffy nose, all the stuff.  We are thankful to have time to recover over this holiday and are mostly better (besides lingering coughing and stuffy noses).