New Year picture

Thank you for the nice compliments to Leiya yesterday. Tetsu came home last night and said that when he opened my blog (on his lunch break) he didn't even recognize Leiya. "Who is THAT?" He liked the picture of Leiya brushing her teeth the most.

The other day in the supermarket I found some Coca Cola that I wanted to buy. I don't drink Coca Cola! (but Tetsu does). I like the Christmasy bottles. Maybe they are trying to be snowballs... or tree ornaments. They look cute together sitting in my refrigerator.

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Yesterday I made our 2011 New Year's card. Instead of Christmas cards, Japanese send out New Year's post cards and somewhere along the line our family has made it a tradition to send out a family picture. Not so unusual in the States, but not that common in Japan. The past few years we are spread out around the world so it takes some doing to get us all together! Anyway... I'm going to try to share our old New Year's cards with you starting from today.

Here is our first card as a family that we sent out in 1986. (Tetsu and I had been married for 5 years already but this was the first photo card we sent out.) Takumi must have been about 6 months old and we lived in Sendai, a northern city in Japan. I think we took the picture in a large park near our apartment where Tetsu would walk the crying baby sometimes in the middle of the night. All that Japanese on the right are best wishes and the date, 61st year of the Showa Emperor. That was 25 years ago. Who ARE those people?!