Thank goodness the New Year is almost here. This year has been incredibly long. Sean and Catie are really wonderful, but I am sick and tired of being a single parent since coming here. I’m tired. But I think they had a wonderful Christmas. They were allowed to open one present Christmas eve, even though Jeff wasn’t here.

Then I had to get them into bed and wait for them to fall asleep so I could get everything ready for Christmas

Then they eagerly opened all their presents, and even gave some of them a spin

Catie looks like she’s doing great, but she still doesn’t understand why she isn’t going fast. She doesn’t realize that she has to provide the power for the skateboard, but she’s really good at balancing!

Yeah, we’ve been MIA, life is super busy, but we haven’t done much interesting stuff, pretty much just basic survival. We went to the Christmas festival up here last night, not too Christmassy except for Santa. Sean didn’t want to see him, so it was all up to Catie

On the way to the festival we drove by this guy. This was the first time I finally had my camera right next to me so I could get a picture

And here are pictures from the last family day at school where we made soba noodle for okinawa soba. No pictures of the soba since we were busy eating the final product

And here are some pictures from a zoo trip awhile back that were sitting in the gallery but not posted