As we did last year, we put up a fence around the tree this year to keep the cats from chewing on the (artificial) needles and batting at the ornaments. Lura is tall enough to reach over the top of it now, so she is able to enjoy the ornaments up close!
Cheryl's whole family came to join us for about a week around Christmas. On Christmas Eve day, as we had in July, we drove to Japantown to have lunch with Mom's brother Keiji and his family.
In July, Lura mostly watched her second cousin Jeremy as he played on the concrete planters in the previous photo. Five months older, this time she wanted to chase him! She also liked the wooden snake he had brought with him, and they made good use of the karaoke stage (on which they're sitting in this photo) in the restaurant, Oiwake.
Traveling with this many people, we were glad we had bought a minivan seven months earlier!
Our church has three services on Christmas Eve, two in the evening and one just before midnight. Mark sang with the choir at the first two, and Cheryl and Lura went to the earliest one with him. Here we are dressed up, just before heading out. Mark seldom wears a tie in the lab at work, and he usually covers up with a choir robe so he doesn't often wear ties in church either; thus Lura was quite puzzled by the Looney Tunes Christmas tie he was wearing for this occasion!
Lura's good friend Ivy was there too, and the two of them had a great time chasing each other around the garden while the choir warmed up before the service.
We had been told that a child will not anticipate birthdays or Christmas when he or she is two years old, but three will be a different story. When the day arrives, though, our two-year-old certainly knows something is up! First thing upon coming downstairs, she went to the tree to investigate the presents piled underneath.
She certainly understands about opening presents, and wanted to help the rest of us with ours as well, after helping Mark to pass them out. Here she assists Auntie Gail.
She also understands about books, and the proceedings came to a halt whenever she opened one and sat down to look it over before going on to the next present!
When we visited JoAnna, Grant, and their kids earlier in the month, Lura enjoyed playing with Amanda's magnetic drawing board (so did Mark!). She was given two of them for Christmas, and we aren't going to return either of them--she uses them both extensively! Grandpa taught her about tracing her hand, and many other toys and objects, though Daddy claims credit for teaching her about "hand turkeys."
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