The main event over the holidays: Sam's Homecoming

 The Airport Welcome
(Thanks to Ashley for taking all these pictures for us!)

And Sam and Anson got to meet for the first time - yay!

Temple Trip followed by ice-cream at Fenton's

Celebrating with Chibas!

Christmas and New Year's Eve in pictures...

The kids weren't short of attention or love this holiday. :)

New Year's Eve hair cut!

Making & eating Japanese food with my siblings is one of my favorite things to do.  This night:  Gyoza and Spicy Tuna rolls.

This is how we celebrated New Year's Eve.

Actually, THIS is how we celebrated.  Food.  Board games.  Family.

Getting ready for Christmas...

"Dear Santa  My Little Pet Shop"

Everything under Christmas tree lights is more magical.

Jiichan made mochi with some Japanese clients and brought us some.  We had to watch Claire - she always starts eating these before the rest of us can get to them...

Claire doesn't take naps everyday, but this one will stay in my memory for a long time.

My cousin Amanda helped us decorate sugar cookies to give to neighbors & friends.  Guess who decorated the abominable snowman...

Claire wanted to make reindeer candy canes to give to her class.  We used hot glue.  She got her first glue-gun "burn".

Once a year I get to dress up for the PwC holiday party.

The Christmas party at Church had lots of music performances by various groups.  Anson liked conducting all of them from his seat.

Dress up was optional for the party.  We dressed up, of course!

Before another holiday sing-a-long we found a free piano.

PwC's Santa was adorable and so great with the kids.  He even told Claire which room and which shelf at his workshop in the North Pole held her toy.  Too bad Anson has such separation anxiety right now...

Thanksgiving 2011

Sorry I don't have time to write about everything, but at least the pictures are up!

To prepare for the holiday we had a Family Home Evening lesson on gratitude based on "For the Strength of Youth", created a Thankful Tree, and had persimmon bars for dessert.

This is how I make pie crusts: roll between plastic wrap, keep the wrap folded in, unfold inside the pan, then remove the wrap.

Sometimes she's actually helpful when she helps!

Claire dressed herself in unparelled style for Thanksgiving dinner.

And, of course, here's our Thanksgiving Menu:

Ham, because some people don't like turkey.

Potatoes from Finland, we call them "Cinnamon Potatoes".  Serious yummy.

Sweet Potatoes with pecans and sage

Every festive meal at Mom's has deviled eggs.

Hawaiian sweet bread

Our low-key dinner party (well, maybe the kids were a little more rowdy...).

Merry Christmas 2011

This Christmas has been nothing but wonderful.  There are many reasons. I hope I will always remember these for future Christmases.

1. Preparation. I thought I was going to be at a week-long training mid-December in Detroit for work, so I hurried around Thanksgiving to get everything decorated and gifts purchased in advance so I wouldn't have a stressful last-minute Christmas.  I ended up getting alternate training arrangements and didn't have to go.  The whole month of December I just got to enjoy Christmas instead of prepare for it.
2. Claire's Christmas Fun List. Mentioned in my previous post.
3. Christmas music.  Church choir songs.  Singing with the Young Women for our Church party. Singing with Blake and the McGhees in a quartet for a special musical number at Church.  Claire sang with the Church Primary for the party and Sundays.  Calling grandparents via Skype to have Claire sing for them.  Christmas Eve carol singing during my Mom's traditional family program.  Singing along to one of the most entertaining pianists/hosts at the Bakers' Christmas open house. Christmas caroling to old neighbors with my siblings. Christmas songs on the radio driving around town.  Christmas music playing through our home daily.
4. FAMILY.  Blake's parents came to visit us the week before Christmas.  It was so fun and natural to have them here.  We're glad we got to see them this holiday season even after they moved away.  And my brother Sam is coming  home from his mission on New Year's day so my other siblings came out to surprise him and came in time to spend Christmas with us.  It is so NICE just to be around each other.  We just get each other like no one else can.  My kids love having auntie & uncles around, too.  Anson met my brother Mark and brother-in-law Gentry for the first time.  While Anson is having fierce separation anxiety with others, he has completely embraced these guys, reinforced the bond with my sister, and even snuggles up to my brother's new girlfriend.  WE LOVE FAMILY!
5. Perspective.  Christmas day we visited a large family who has literally lived in an RV for several years.  We went home more humble.  The morning after Christmas Blake got a call saying that one of our Church members died the night before.  The man was a father of several young children.  While we have so enjoyed this holiday for so many reasons, we gratefully recognize many, many everyday blessings in our lives and are not taking them for granted.

So proud of her Christmas cookies.

We dressed up for the Christmas party as angels using sheets and tablecloths.

Anson loved the Christmas music in the program at the party - especially directing the music from the back.

I brought the kids to my office to meet Santa.  He told Claire exactly which shelf in which room at the North Pole is was keeping her present for her.  Anson cried the whole time.

Holidays always make you sentimental for family.  We are SO LUCKY this year to have my side of the family HERE this year!

Christmas Eve magic while Blake & I watched "It's a Wonderful Life".

I felt Christmas this year.   Decorations, gifts, cookies and parties are just a accompaniment to what's really important.  This year I felt FAITH.  I felt FAMILY.  I felt PEACE.  I'm so thankful for this time of year that we get to focus on those things (if we don't let ourselves get caught up in the commercial distractions).  At least for me and my house, we get to talk about the birth of Jesus Christ, why we celebrate his birth so enthusiastically, why he came to earth, why he is our Savior, why we love Him.  I hope you each got to ask yourself "why?" this year and felt Christmas yourself, too.  It's wonderful.

Our Christmas Fun List!

Claire announced one day that Christmas was only a little bit fun but Easter is a lot of fun.  (She loves Easter egg hunts and has empty egg hunts almost daily with Gramma around Easter-time.)  But Christmas is HUGE!  So I told her we'd come up with a Christmas Fun list to do something every day for Christmas.  I tried to incorporate Sundays, Monday night FHEs, and other calendar items already.  So far we've made candy cane reindeer, she made a gingerbread house at preschool, we took some friends to the Creche Exhibit at the Palo Alto LDS church, and watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional (access it through headline link at the lds.org home page).  The Creche and the Devotional were great ways to kick off the Christmas season for us!  It reminds us what the season is really about - Jesus Christ, and why we are so happy that he was born so many years ago.

Here is our list.

Claire was so excited she started copying the list by hand onto another sheet of Christmas paper.  After about 30 minutes and only 5 items later she abandoned it, but I thought it was an excellent self-created exercise in hand writing!

What does your family do to make Christmas fun and meaningful?  I'm gathering ideas for next year.  Next year I hope to get this into a real Advent Calendar.

In other news, Anson just told me "no" for the first time yesterday.  I fear I'm starting into a new phase with him...