We drive out to a tree farm in Issaquah to cut down a Christmas tree. This evening we’re hosting two Japanese visitors to Cozi, Kazuki and Manabu, and invite them along to get the tree — it’s surely a unique tourist experience. And indeed, everyone has fun cutting down the tree, then enjoying some hot chocolate and hot apple cider afterwards.
Angela comes downtown to pick up Jan for a date night. She arrives while the Cozi family is doing its monthly late afternoon Rock Band session. Angela joins in on bass.
Bree and Lambie
Liya rehearses her upcoming Special Day talk on weather. Her topic is isobars–the first time a homework assignment for any of our girls is so obscure that even we have to look it up.
Anya often doesn’t eat the lunches we make for her. This morning we made her make her own lunch. She made herself a Nutella sandwich.
This evening, we discovered that Anya didn’t even eat the sandwich she had made for herself!
Double sleepover. Anya’s classmate Kaila sleeps over here; Liya goes to spend the night with Kate, Kaila’s sister. Liya doesn’t feel great in the evening, so she ultimately spends the night here as well. In the morning, Anya, Kaila, and Kate play a new memory card game they’ve drawn up. Each card depict’s an article of women’s clothing or a fashion accessory. The concept behind the game is that each player starts out (metaphorically) undressed, and has to collect things to wear. The girls think this is so hilarious, they play it over and over and over.
Our friends Angel and Leah join us for a traditional Chinese hot pot dinner. We transfer the cooking stock to the heated pot on the table, and then wait for it to get hot enough to cook the meat. We wait. And wait. And wait. Jan declares that this is a new traditional meal: Chinese warm pot. We eventually figure out that the pot isn’t correctly plugged in.
Jan: Okay, Sabriya, I’ll sing two bedtime songs. Do you want me to sing the Lullaby song? And maybe Yuyake Koyake (a Japanese children’s song)?
Bree: No, I want to pick the songs.
Jan: Okay.
Bree: I want to pick the Lullaby song.
Jan: Okay.
…
Bree: And Yuyake Koyake.
Jan: Okay.
We have a big pile of Amazon boxes stacked up by the Christmas tree. We think there’s a pretty good chance that some of them aren’t presents, but are instead mundane things we happened to order in the past few weeks. This might lead to some letdowns on Christmas morning, as we open boxes of light bulbs or whatever.
Bree dons her angel costume for the Christmas pageant.
Merry Christmas! We enjoy a nice, relatively quiet Christmas morning. The girls are especially happy with gifts from Santa: a pair of clear plastic “glass slippers” for Sabriya, who loves Cinderella these days; embroidery thread for Anya, who likes making friendship bracelets; and a red and gold folding fan for Liya, who promptly changes her outfit to match.
Angela’s gift to Jan is an Xbox Kinect: a video game system that requires you to jump around, wave your arms, and so on, to make things happen on the screen. Anya and Liya instantly take to it as soon as Jan sets it up in the afternoon. Jan and Angela play together later in the evening, and after half an hour are completely exhausted.
Drive to Portland. We wanted to make a short trip somewhere over the holiday break, and had yet to take the girls to Portland, OR, so we make the fairly short drive down in about 3 1/2 hours. We’re staying at the RiverPlace Hotel, which sits on the Willamette River in downtown Portland. Anya and Liya are sharing a room, but they refuse to share a bed, and so we go through extensive negotiation to decide who gets the nice bed and who has to sleep on the floor. The concluded negotiation dictates alternating control of the bed, with an elaborate coin toss procedure to determine who gets to decide who sleeps in the bed first. We’re completely baffled as to why neither of them is interested in the pull-out sofa bed.
Portland, Day One. The kids are up bright and early, and busy themselves with books and paper crafts until we get up. The hotel has an arrangement with an athletic club down the block, so we spend the morning at the club’s pool. After lunch we make the short drive across the bridge to the excellent OMSI science museum. There we meet up with Jen Matsumura, an old friend of Jan’s from his year at Waseda, who’s there with her five year-old, Owen. Jen has to take Owen back home in the middle of the afternoon, and Angela has an errand to run, but the girls are happy to explore the museum for longer. Jan eventually leads them on a walk back across the bridge. We meet up with Jen and Owen again later, this time joined by her husband Jim. The last time we saw Jen and Jim was at their wedding in September 2001, just before Anya was born, so today’s our first chance to meet each other’s children in person.
Portland, Day Two. In the morning, Jan picks up his mother, Lyn, from the airport; she’s joining us on her way back from visiting Jan’s brother Chris in San Francisco. Back at the hotel, we all stroll down the riverfront promenade in search of lunch, and end up at the nice Little River Cafe. We spend a chunk of the afternoon at Powell’s City of Books, justifiably famous for its enormous selection. The girls have even prepared for this expedition–they brought only one book each on this trip, knowing they’d have a chance to buy more at Powell’s.
After shopping at Powell’s, we stop at a coffeeshop and gelateria for a snack. Bree never fails to take advantage of an opportunity to eat ice cream (or gelato).
We spend the rest of the afternoon back at the hotel, where the girls settle down to read the books they bought at Powell’s. We have dinner at Biwa’s, a great Japanese izakaya (pub) recommended by Jan’s friend Jen. Jan and Angela both order one of our favorites: yakionigiri (grilled rice balls).
Painting at CHAP (the Children’s Healing Art Project) Art Factory in the Pearl District. CHAP is a charity that teaches art classes to kids stuck in hospitals. They run a very cool art studio for kids in Portland’s Pearl District, and it’s open to the public. In the hour and half that we’re there, the girls have a great time covering page after page with paint.
Liya somehow manages to keep her smock clean. Bree manages to not only get paint in her hair, she somehow gets paint under her smock.
We drive away with all available horizontal surfaces in the car covered with drying paint projects.