first of all, yoshi is at his parents' house for the weekend so i have time for the internet.

second of all, i forgot something very important in my last post. on my flight from tokyo to LA, the young man in front of me had his chair all the way back for the entire flight!! ugh. but, to make matters worse, my chair, which was in front of the lavatory and so it didn't matter if i was all the way back or not, wouldn't stay in the reclined position!! that was even worse....

ok, onto today's blog. my first week back home. well, since i went to bed as soon as i got to my parents' house, i was able to actually get up at a decent hour. around 8 am i think. i gave hiro his breakfast, got dressed and then hit the town. we probably went to toys r us, target and the mall. then we went to lunch at an italian place. we got home some time during late afternoon. we didn this pretty much every day that first week, except on wednesday, when we went to seattle.

my dad stays at home these days, mainly playing computer games and shouting at the TV. it was good to avoid him, especially that first week. ugh.

on friday (the day before christmas eve) i went to my friend's house to have dinner. we were close in high school, and she invited over a couple other friends from high school. we had our own group, in fact they were practically the only reason i would go to school. in the mornings before class we would meet in the cafeteria and play hearts. it was so good to see them again. three of us have small children and it was so neat to get together. during dinner we discovered that none of us had plans for new year's eve so we thought we'd get together for a DVD night or something.

christmas was a total let-down this year, mainly because of my dad. i really don't want to go into the details here, but let's just say that neither my brother, sister nor i want to spend another one like that again. it was so uncomfortable. christmas eve was fine, the four of us (mom, brother, sister and me) went to a matinee showing of the nutcracker in seattle. it was a bit silly, though, probably because it was a matinee and also christmas eve, so it was 'fun' for kids. *sigh*

hiro made out like a bandit on christmas, receiving lots of toys and clothes. friends came over just before the turkey dinner but i'm so glad they did. i didn't even know christine was going to be there for christmas. dinner was yummy but really...not fun. anyway, that was the first week.