Christmas is in the Air!

I have always loved Christmas! I love the decorations, the food, the shopping hysteria and although I could do without Mariah squealing in my ear, I don't even mind the music. But most of all, I love spending time with family.

On November 22nd, I had my thirteen year 'Japaniversary'. During that time I have only been back to Canada once for Christmas. In many cases I've had to work, but mostly it is the crazy price of travel at this time of year that has kept me away. As such, I have become accustomed to a rather scaled down version of Christmas celebrations.

I always put up my Charlie Brown Christmas tree and make a turkey dinner for friends who are also far from home. Shin and I exchange presents and the Christmas spirit is certainly in the air but...

...it's just not the same without your family.

Now that I have my own little family, Kio's first Christmas is something that I have been looking forward to.

On one condition, it doesn't start until December!

In my world there needs to be some downtime between Halloween and Christmas. It drives me crazy that shops are blaring Christmas music first thing in the morning on November 1st (in some cases even before that).

Now that December has arrived we're totally ready to embrace the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, it has been very busy in the Hirano household and we weren't able to do anything together as a family until last night.

It is my hope that when Kio is all grown up, he will think back on Christmas and not focus on the presents, but remember the good times that we had together as a family. As such, Shin and I are trying to do all of our Christmas activities together.

This is a difficult thing when you live on different 24 hour clocks.

As last night was the first time we were all in the apartment together we cranked the Christmas tunes and got good ole' Charlie out of his box.

Assembling Charlie.

While Daddy and Kio were busy putting the tree together, I got the ornaments out - Kio was immediately enthralled.

We decided that for this year we would keep the tree out of Kio's reach, so we put it up on a small table in our living room. We all had a hand in decorating, Kio couldn't get enough of the shiny baubles and flashing lights.

He clearly enjoys the Christmas tree MUCH more than the blow-up Jack-o-lantern from Halloween.

With Charlie all decked out in his glory we finished off the evening by writing Christmas cards. Kio insisted on signing them himself.

He also 'signed' his face, my arm and his highchair.

Yea for Christmas!