December 13-22nd. More advent activities, the Christmas Star, and the first wound in Japan.

December 13.  Homemade tortillas for taco night.  Love my little kitchen helpers. 

December 16.  Just because.

First snow! 👇

https://youtu.be/fXvZfCAIOJg

Cool rain clouds in the sunset.

Advent activity: Our first Christmas Cake (very much a thing here). It came with candles so, naturally, we sang happy birthday to Jesus. 😄 It was very tasty! The strawberries were amazing! 👇

https://youtu.be/Pz3fb1N-Udc

December 18. Advent Activity: Making origami ornaments and dance party with friends!

Blake was the real hero of the origami making!

These two. 😂😅  This is Holland.  Milo has proclaimed that he is going to marry her, because she wants to marry him.... so, logic. 💁😂  Also, she is awesome.  We love our friends. ❤

Dance party video here.⬇️

https://youtu.be/wpsBmF0ZEQ4

December 19.  Advent Activity: bake cookies for the single marines on base.  We baked tons of cookies; several different kinds!  It was lots of fun, and the boys were excited to take these to the chapel where the cookies were being gathered and packaged for the marines.  It was like Santa's workship, but with cookies.

This chapel is huge, and we loved the decorations.

This is a very large, half scale nativity.  I want one.

Milo's old bike was refurbished (new tubes and tires) so it could be passed down to Toby.  He was thrilled he could finally move on to a bigger bike!

December 20.  Christmas Sunday.  How do I pick just one of these?! ❤

December 21.  Blake had to go out of town to Okinawa for a few days, so I was glad to have things to help keep us busy while he was gone. This night, we went out to the sea wall right after sunset to see the Christmas star.  We saw it!  The boys were thrilled.  After the sea wall, we went home and made a fire and roasted hot dogs for dinner. 

Do you see it?  The star is near the middle, just below that top cloud.

December 22.  Blake was still out of town.  We met up with friends at Glass Beach this day.  We were having a lot of fun, until Sam wiped out on some metal stairs on one of the playgrounds, and busted open his eye lid.  It was pretty gnarly, and my brain sort of screeched to a halt, but luckily one of my friends is a doctor and the other is an athletic trainer.  They made a great team to help me get moving and decide the best way to treat it.  Luckily, his blood coagulated really quickly, so the mess was minimal.  We went back to my friend's house and got him cleaned up, and steri strips were applied.  He's a little trooper.

Milo had Christmas sock day at school.  His are the candy stripes at the very top with the green below the knees.