Last Christmas in Japan

We made the kids wait until 8 to open gifts.  The boys like to sleep in so they were perfectly fine with waiting but it was torture for the girls.  Piper slept poorly the night before and was so excited she couldn't fall asleep until midnight, which of course, made Santa come even later.  We started opening gifts and then paused to talk to Will for an hour.  We didn't want to waste his time with making him watch us open gifts he didn't get to have.  We were asked not to send packages to Will to we put money on his debit card for him to buy whatever he wants.  Lame but thankfully, Will doesn't usually ask for many gifts anyway and often gets mostly money for Christmas.  He seemed cheerful and said he wasn't homesick.  He's not loving his companion as much as his last but I'm sure with time they will figure out each other and find all the reasons they were paired together.  His companion had covid this week so they mostly stayed in the apartment and played monopoly.  Will left with another roommate, whose companion also had covid, and they biked to get food from the food court for their sick companions.  On the way home they got caught in a torrential downpour and the bags of food ended up having an inch of water inside.  Yuck.  They were all good sports about it but Will says this is a pretty common thing to be stuck out in the rain.  They had a dinner appointment with a family on Christmas and also a secret santa exchange with the other elders in his district planned for the day.  

For us, it was pretty chill.  We just sat around and read books, played with toys (Felicity), ate good food (homemade pizza), crocheted (Piper), played fortnight (the boys), and worked on personal projects (mostly Mike), and later, worked out at the gym (also the boys).

The first Christmas here felt kind of bland and I felt really homesick for America but I'm happy that over the years we've figured out how to make Christmas still feel very Christmas-y.  I tried to prep early but even then, a handful of packages didn't come on time.  No one seemed upset about it though, which I appreciate.  The next few weeks might be pretty boring for the kids but I'll try and get everyone out of the house from time to time.