Christmas Eve Dinner

 One of Ted’s aikido buddies, Ronny, invited us to spend Christmas Eve with him and his family and one of their friends.  He is Norwegian, his wife is Japanese, and they have two children.  Ronny even drove and picked us up at our apartment.  We appreciate their kindness.  It was a wonderful evening.

friend and daughters

They prepared turkey and dressing and cranberries and all the “fixin’s”, much like a Christmas meal we would eat in the US. We were amazed that they had an oven here in Japan that was big enough to cook a turkey. It was interesting to hear about the traditional holiday foods in Japan and Norway.

The children's table

 After all this, there was cheesecake with oreo cookie crust and strawberries.  Oishii desu!

Their pet turtles had turkey for dinner, too.  Did you know that turtles can’t have spinach?  We learned last night that spinach will kill them.

The children opened gifts while we had tea.

We played a couple of hands of rummy, then a really fun board game called Dixit.   

Before we knew it, the clock said 11 and Ronny drove us home, complete with leftovers from the meal and a Norwegian chocolate bar.  Thank you Ronny and family! We had a great time.

Snow removal

Here they really do remove snow – in a big truck.  I can’t imagine where they take it, there’s snow everywhere else too!

The Year of the Dragon
I just unpacked the Dragon Master and plan to get back to work on it.  This was a Dorothy Lesher class I took at Calloway two years ago. The design is drawn on the canvas by Dorothy.
As 2012 is the year of the Dragon in Japan, I think this is an appropriate project to work on. I’ll update my progress until I decide to work on something else.