My baby boy,

Tomorrow I am subbing in third grade and the teacher left a note that they are learning about Christmas Around the World. I was planning on telling about this because we did the Christmas Around the World unit when I was homeschooling you all the first year in Hawaii. I then looked back at my “memories” to see that three years ago today I posted something about Christmas in Japan.

Three years ago we learned about Christmas in Japan and attempted to make paper cranes out of origami paper. I never expected it to be easy, but that was much harder than I thought it would be. Mine didn’t even completely look like a paper crane and I know you guys and I were getting frustrated. My favorite thing I learned about during that lessons was that in Japan, Christmas is often celebrated with fried chicken.

We had started off that unit with Germany and made some sort of German stuffing together. Normally, you guys would have never even tried it. However, since you helped make it you guys actually tried it and enjoyed it. We sat in the front room by the Christmas tree, on the Eagles blanket, and ate together.

I wish I remembered more details of these memories, more of exactly what happened and what you guys said. I should be grateful that we did things like that and I at least have the memories of those experiences, though.

I haven’t even gotten your gift from Santa yet. That may be one I order online and just have shipped to the house. I don’t think I can go out shopping for that.

I love you more than anything, baby boy. I wish you were here to give me a big hug. Goodnight and sweet dreams.