Christmas

 Merry Christmas, everyone!

It's Christmas Eve afternoon here in Japan! I had plans, but of course they got changed!

I planned to do a load of baking and make a lovely dinner for this evening.

But I'm so tired from yesterday's trip to Costco, then more shopping for vegetables, and then teaching!

One thing I'm really happy about is that I'm not in so much pain! I did just over 7,000 steps yesterday, the muscles in my thighs feel tight, and after standing to make obento, breakfast and cleaning the kitchen a bit (just over an hour), my back started to hurt a bit, but not like before! I'm so happy about this; it really shows that losing some weight and exercising is paying off.

I asked David to pick up some milk and eggs on the way back from work. He did, but he also raided the snack aisle!

David's snack haul!

Plus, there's cake in the fridge! I'm glad that he got this. I don't need to bake, but I did make some snickerdoodles! We don't buy snacks, I don't think we've bought this much in the past year!

I've put the beef in the slow cooker. I like it done like that, long, slow cooking. Makes it a lot more tender than in the oven!

The beef, all ready to cook.

I forgot to mention that Mikey had a magic show on Saturday. 

Saturday was crazy busy for Mikey; he had three classes in the morning, two of which overlapped in time. He asked Hannah to help out; she could start the one nursery class while he finished the one before, and then drive to the other place.  This worked out well. Hannah watched Mikey's show and said it was very good! She sent a few photos!

Tomorrow, Hannah and I are off to see "The Phantom of the Opera". I'm really looking forward to that, but it still seems strange to go out on Christmas Day!