Happy New Year! 2012 brought some changes for the kids at church. Jacob is now in the Sunbeam class in Primary. I taught Sharing Time on Jan. 1 so made sure to involve the new Sunbeams. Jacob loves to participate. He also sang as best he could with the new song the kids learned today. Emily, Brandon, and Nathan all got new teachers at church, and Nicole started nursery today! She's only 15 months old--not old enough to officially be in nursery (18 mos.), but since all but one nursery kid moved up to Sunbeams today, they figured Nicole might as well come in early to join him. Yahoo, twist my arm! She had a good time and especially loved the graham crackers.
Jacob is growing into his big boy identity really nicely, being fully potty trained now to boot! Acting like a big boy is so cute that it also gets him lots of positive attention from his parents!
We have a few New Year's traditions: On New Year's Eve we have hot chocolate, and after the kids (and I) are in bed, Paul goes with friends to the shrine to ring the bell before midnight. On New Year's Day, we hang our "Happy New Year" banner and have sparkling cider for dinner. Sometime around then we go to the shrine as a family to buy our fortunes and hang them up there, and we buy some yummy Japanese fair-type foods from the vendors there. This year we went on Jan. 3:
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| Vendors line up to sell food. |
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| We went to see the bell by a less-busy area outside the shrine. |
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| Eating our snacks - Nicole wasn't sure about the creamy stuff in this roll |
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| but it sure was yummy! |
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| The wooden beam wasn't there to ring it anymore, but this was the bell Paul rang on New Year's Eve. |
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| We love these gooey balls (dango) made out of rice flour (mochi) with a sweet teriyaki (?) sauce. |
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| We got fortunes to hang up on the strings by the shrine. |
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| Year of the dragon |
