Here are some photos from my visit to the States at Christmas. It was so nice to see everyone! As you can see, I really enjoyed myself!

Merry/Happy/Congratulations & all that jazz...

Happy New Year!!!

I figured I should put up photographic evidence that I'm still alive...

Though I was out of the country for two weeks for the holidays, my prolonged absence from cyberspace can be blamed on jet lag, computer woes, and some really bad allergies. I think I' m allergic to the heating unit in the teachers' room at school, and I'm definitely allergic to the sub-zero temps in my little office at home (I was SO spoiled with central heat in the US). I thought I'd be clever and move my computer to a room that could get heat, and I fouled everything up. The good news is that I finally got the school to sign out a laptop to me, so I'm not having to drag my poor Mac back and forth on the bike now - yea :)

The trip home was so nice and warm - I'm so SO lucky to have such amazing family and friends. Thank you thank you thank you all for helping me to have such a lovely Christmas.

Ahhh - there's the bell...

See you soon again -

(in the meantime, how about sharing about your favorite holiday moment in the comment section below?)

赤鼻のとなかい "Akahana no Tonakai"

While the big kids were making cookies, the little ones were tracing their feet and hands to make tonakai (reindeer). The Rudolf nose looks a little funny in the photo, but the glittery red pom poms were really cute.

Click on the (post title) link to hear Akahana no Tonakai (Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer) in Japanese. It's even got the lyrics in romaji, so you can sing along!

Would you believe I just made sugar cookies from scratch for the first time ever? Now chocolate chip cookies - that's another matter - I'm a pro at those. But little shaped cookies like these - yep I always just got those pre-made roll doughy things from the store. Of course they don't have such confections here, so I had to make them. It was the perfect activity for my little neighbors here when they came over to my house for a kids' Christmas party last week.











Here they are getting ready to roll out the dough so they could start cutting out the star shapes - wow what a mess! But they did a good clean up job afterwards :)














While the cookies were baking, we sang some Christmas songs. As you can see, they seemed to enjoy singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with the appropriate props :)