A Better Than We Expected Christmas

Christmas Eve dawned a little cold and dreary. We had to go to the BX to get each other a Christmas gift. It was a madhouse and I was glad to get out of there. We were torn over where to go for dinner that night. We thought about the curry buffet, but opted to head to the American Village instead. Christmas is different here. Back home after about 6:00 on Christmas Eve, everywhere you look is a ghost town. Not here. Despite the cold and rain, lots of people were out, and lots of places were open. We chose a Thai restaurant.

Big mistake.

 Here's what Brendan thought of it.

We should have stuck with the curry buffet. We went for the full experience and ordered one of their "set" dinners that included about five courses. Let me put it this way:  The best thing I had was the water. On the bright side, Brendan was very well behaved the entire time.

After dinner we walked around the mall and spotted the Doctor Fish booth. These fish love to eat dead skin so you can pay 500 yen to stick your feet in for ten minutes.

It really tickles.

This right here was the highlight of my night.

His feet are so ticklish he could only stand it if he planted them on the bottom.

It was a great Christmas Eve. And my very first Christmas gift was a full night of sleep, because Brendan slept all night long.

It took a lot of work, but we did get a tree up.

Impressed?

Yeah, right. Here's our tree.

In the days leading up to Christmas I was sad and disappointed about how I knew it would turn out. I couldn't find a Christmas outfit for Brendan. I didn't even have a stocking for him. But then I decided that I would rather it be like this now, when he is unaware, than when he's eight and really understands what is going on. And then we woke up on Christmas morning and he was more interested in the trash than he was in his presents. Nevertheless, he got plenty of them.

Those toys in the background are toys he already had.

This was the longest Christmas morning ever since Brendan was absolutely not interested in opening anything. Tom finally opened the last few himself. I went upstairs to shower so we could go to the USO and call home. When I got downstairs these two were ready for a Christmas nap.

Oh, and I sure can't leave out the Christmas kitty.

He loves to get the kitties. I'm working on teaching him to "be easy" because he loves to grab and them and pull their tails.

We were invited to Christmas dinner with several families. We had already met two of them. One of them has a baby about 3 weeks younger than Brendan. When we got there he had two more presents waiting for him.

He was actually more interested in the dog toys.

He played hard all day, and into the night. There was no shortage of kids or toys.

Or dogs. I wanted to take this one home with me.

He really liked Kaelyn's dinosaur.

So all in all, we had a pretty good day. I think we both expected it to be kind of sad and depressing but it wasn't. With Brendan around, sad and depressing really isn't possible.

Merry Christmas!