Joyful Christmas 2010 was fantastic!

After many weeks of planning, preparing and practicing, Joyful Christmas happened Saturday. Thanks to everyone who was off stage, on stage, and all the others who helped in many other ways. And especially thanks to everyone who prayed!
I'm sure MANY more pictures will be coming to Facebook soon, but here are some that might be a little different (sorry they're a little blurry).  Two of the pictures were taken on stage RIGHT before the curtain went up. The other two were in the lobby after the event.

Christmas cards from one of my first grade classes

I was pretty amazed by these cards-the pictures are great, and the writing (in Japanese AND English) is wonderful! Most of the cards say "Merry Christmas, Robert Sensei" and the student's name, but others have longer messages. The larger images have some examples; two cards have similar messages, "thank you for Monday's English class-I will do my best!". Another says, "Merry Christmas! Happy Year of the Rabbit!" and one other says, "Christmas is fun, isn't it?" I actually read most of the Japanese on my own, and was so excited that I said to Nozomi, "I can read! I can read!" (First graders' writing is about my reading level...)
I really like the free mixing of Santa Claus, Christmas trees, the year of the rabbit, and Pokemon characters.
If I don't get a chance to post again before:  MERRY CHRISTMAS! Happy birthday, Jesus!

Starbucks mini-concert

We played a short set to promote the Joyful Christmas concert coming this Saturday. Earlier in the afternoon, there were people standing RIGHT over my shoulder on the other side of the rail in the mall, which kind of made me nervous, but then security came through and told them they couldn't stand there. It looks like I'm still making my "concentrate! concentrate! imagine there's nobody behind you! keep playing!" face...
It went great-thanks everybody!

Thanksgiving dinner

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Nozomi and I had dinner with her family. Turkey is expensive and hard to find, so we roasted three whole chickens. We also made green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, mince pie, and pecan pie. Nozomi's mother made salads, including one with kabu no tsukemono (pickled Japanese turnip) which made it into a delicious international Thanksgiving dinner. My original plan of having an early dinner/late lunch at 3:00 turned out to be, well, unrealistic... After the chicken took longer to roast than the recipe said, which meant the drippings weren't ready to use to make the gravy (I see that making Thanksgiving dinner is a series of dominoes now...) we finally sat down to eat at about 5:00. It was later than planned, but very delicious, and Nozomi's family said they enjoyed their first Thanksgiving dinner.