Christmas time is here by golly...

So, here we are, December 24th already! Santa Claus comes tonight! We've had a busy week and
obviously it just got busier as I am returning to this post having left it there for four days! Appologies to everyone - I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas at the right time but I got distracted. In my defense there really was a lot going on!
I enjoyed the lack of planning I was able to get away with for the month of December... I love teaching on a theme! They're totally into anything Christmas so it was an easy few weeks of Eikaiwa! I even started singing with the adult classes.
I was at a loss as to what to do for gifts this year, since we were here over Christmas. We talked a bit about it and decided that making some Christmas goodies was our best bet so I spent the better part of a week making and baking. We wound up with ten different cookies and treats and I found some good boxes and containers to pack them in so that they displayed nicely. Even packing them up was an ordeal though and it took the better part of one evening to get it all done. We have since found that people here have difficulty receiving gifts. We gave the baking away and within a day or two we got something back from many of the people we were giving to. We felt a little distressed about it since our trying to be nice seemed to put pressure on people to reciprocate - not what we were after at all!
Last week there was a ballet Christmas party at the Royal Hotel in Date. It was quite the big deal! It was a bit expensive (about $40 each) and the food was only so-so but there were games and entertainment and a gift exchange. The owner of the ballet school had a present for each of the dancers and there was a gift from her mother too! Joisan was asked to present flowers to one of the teachers which she did with grace (despite the teacher not being someone Joisan particularly likes!)
This week we had the Chugakko Christmas party which I managed to avoid having to help plan and organize! Naoko really got into it and had it all figured out so that I just had to show up and help decorate a bit. The kids used little pound cakes to make houses and they stuck the cookies and candies on with melted white chocolate. It worked really well.
Ian was lucky enough to get to play Santa for the preschool and kindergarten on Wednesday morning. There are some great photos that prove that despite his differing opinion he is actually a little skinny to pull it off properly. He had lots of fun and enjoyed answering all the questions they asked him.
Wednesday evening was the teachers Christmas party. We went to a new restaurant in Date and ate and drank our faces off! I took some photos of the food but in the interest of getting this actually posted today I will have to add them later. After we finished at the restaurant we went to the same bar as last time where we were privilaged to be treated very specially. The VP and I have made a promise that next time we'll go to karaoke afterwards. I think we were all just too exhausted this time!
Thursday was a national holiday - a day off for the Emperor's birthday. We cleaned and organized because it was the potluck Christmas dinner for the adult eikaiwa classes. We had a good turnout and some lovely food! It seems like there were a lot of things to do last week though and every time we got through one of them and I could check it off the list I felt a little weight lift from my shoulders. I gave out boxes of Christmas baking to everyone as they left the party - they seemed to really like it.
I had to work on Friday but the kids didn't have to go to school because of having gone to school last Saturday for the Warashibe festival. Ian took Joisan to Noboribetsu to the chiropractor and they did some last minute errands on the way home. I spent the afternoon making pies for Christmas dinner. We're getting better at making due with the ingredients we can get! We wrapped and organized all evening and somehow wound up staying up far too late as usual! Thankfully we have teenagers now and neither one of them was interested in getting up at the crack of dawn to dive into presents. It was a bit of a weird Christmas morning for us. I was first up and puttered around for a bit before the others started to wake up. Eventually we were functional enough to deal with breakfast before moving on to stockings and presents.
It was all fairly low-key and definately joy of giving was the highlight for all of us. Santa made sure that we had coffee (which we don't usually have here) and some Bailey's to go with it for that Christmas-morning feeling! Thank you Santa!
We lazed and played a bit before we had to get cracking on the preparations for dinner. We had invited about 20 people for a traditional Canadian Christmas dinner. Due to circumstances, only about 14 could be there but it was still a lot of pressure to get everything ready and able to be served hot.
I have never before dealt with a whole Christmas dinner by myself. At home it's usually more of a potluck thing where we all take a dish to be in charge of. This was a bit of a balancing act but with all of us contributing we managed to produce a wonderful dinner. Ian was really focused on making the hall a more intimate and welcoming space and his efforts really paid off! It was so pretty and the company was great. I'm not convinced that they were in love with the food but everyone stayed later than we thought they would, so clearly it was a success!
Sorry to be so long in getting this actually posted - hope you all had a marvellous holiday!