Christmas Festivities!

Alright, this website is being a pain... so the pictures are up top because it's too complicated to drag them to the bottom of the post. Anyway, I meant to post this several days ago, but I've been busy and got frustrated uploading pictures. Here's just a few highlights of Christmas Eve...

Joe and I decided that since this was going to be our first Christmas being spent without any family, that we'd make the most of it and celebrate with friends. We had a big group of friends over on Christmas Eve and it was a great day! We had about 18 friends over (we were worried how we were going to manage it in our tiny house, but it turned out to be ok!) to hang out all afternoon, eat yummy food, open presents, play games, watch movies, and just spend the day together relaxing and having a good time! We're so blessed to have so many amazing friends here in Okinawa to make times like these when we can't be with family so much better. It was our first time hosting a party for such a big holiday, but all went well. Only a small glitch with the ham (we couldn't figure out why it was taking so long to heat up) and learned our lesson to let it defrost longer. We'll keep that in mind for next time ;) I convinced Joe to open presents that night since it was almost Christmas Day anyway (10pm). We did and I love all my gifts! Joe was really thoughtful this year and I feel a tad bad the majority of gifts I got him were clothes, but I did manage to get him some good ones.

Christmas Day was great as well. We spent the morning Skyping with our family to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We even got to do a virtual Christmas with my parents and got to watch them open the gifts we sent them! It was really neat and almost felt like we were together in the same room. Hopefully next year we can all spend it together! We also brought some cupcakes over to our neighbors who are a bit older than us, and are always looking out for us (they're like our "parents" here in Okinawa which I admit, is comforting). They invited us in to chat, have some tea, and then offered us sushi and snacks. We ended up chatting with them for hours and before we knew it, it was already 5pm!

We later went over to Sani and Jay's house for Christmas dinner. It was delicious, and much more intimate with only 6 people (plus one toddler and baby), which was nice. We spent the evening eating great food and playing a few games of Scrabble (our latest addiction). Before we knew it, it was 2:00am and Christmas was over. It was a great two days, and we are so thankful for such great friends. We missed our family a lot this year, but are crossing our fingers (and toes) that next year we can make it out to the states!