I mentioned yesterday that Anthony had received some train stuff for Christmas. From Santa, he received the Tomy PlayRail Twin Tower Train Station that he'd petitioned Santa for, and from Mommy and Daddy he received various sets of extra track, bridges, and the like. All this added to the little PlayRail Automatic Train Transfer Station that he picked out when he turned five in October.

He'd really been hoping for the twin-tower station, and when it came to opening the last present – the present from Santa – he saw what it was with the first tear of the wrapping. [...]

Anthony served at Mass for the first time today, at a Mass said by Fr. Graham McDonnell, who says an English Mass once a month at the Catholic church we attend (the Kyoto Kawaramachi Cathedral, which is the same church that I got married in almost 10 years ago).

Anthony had been begging to do it for months, but it took until today until our schedule matched up with Fr. McDonnell's, so by the time we got there, he was quite excited.

Jimazaki-san (one of the parish office workers) had to scrounge around for a cassock in Anthony's size. She [...]

As I mentioned yesterday, five-year-old Anthony's first present unwrapping set a pattern that we saw a number of times throughout the morning....

For whatever reason, the present from Grandma and Grandpa generated a powerful pose instead. I don't think he really knew what it was, but the picture of a helicopter was likely sufficient to trigger the celebration.

The helicopter thing has a central hub with the helicopter connected by a rod, so that the helicopter can go around and around, and up and down in conjunction with how much power is applied. It actually takes a fair amount of [...]

Yesterday during our Christmas, the first present Anthony opened set a pattern that we saw repeated fairly often, one quite different than the wide-eyed wonder of a year ago...

He brought it to Mommy, asked what it was, and was thrilled to find out that his Aunt Marci and Uncle Marty had sent him two uniforms, one for a policeman and another for a chef....

Later, Anthony and I were playing, and we pretended that I did something bad so that he could be a policeman and "get" me....

Thanks Marci and Marty! The Chef outfit will have to be [...]

The picture above of Anthony ripping the packaging from a present pretty much sums up the day, but our Christmas started a month ago when we set up our Christmas tree.

When I was growing up in Ohio, we had a real, perfectly-shaped, wonderfully-smelling, live evergreen tree every Christmas. We always got scratched up when decorating it, and the needles would eventually get shed to the floor only to eventually find their way in a most painful manner to our feet. It was absolutely wonderful.

It's been 20+ years since I moved out on my own, and 20+ years since [...]