Nami sits up

Nami can sit up in the cuddle rocker.  Above she is holding her toshidama (Japanese children's New Years present money) she got from her great grandparents.

Oops, she is beginning to tip over!  Below is my favorite photo of her.

Nami's prints

Koji and Katsura brought a photo frame print set to give to Ojiisan and Obaasan as a Christmas present.  Here they are making the prints.  It had a clean celophane plastic that kept baby's hand and foot clean yet copied the print.  The foot was easy, but took several tries to get the hand as Nami wasn't really into holding her hand down on the pad without movement!

Here is the result.  Ojiisan wrote the comments so he could remember the date, where and who.

Skiing in Iwatake

Above Katsura and Waka in red are ready to go down the hill on the top of Iwatake ski area.  I was inside watching Nami with Jack and the boys took their wives for a few runs.  When Ka-chan came in to relieve me she said she was afraid to ski another round as she would then not want to stop!  She is actually a snowboarder but we didn't have equipment for her and she wanted to try skiing.
Here we are all posed on top of the hill.  We took the gondola up to the nice lodge on top and from there we coud enjoy good snow conditions on several lifts.  The bottom of the gondola area was pretty short on snow.
After and before.  When we came this snow man greated us at the minshiku (small family run inn where we stay every year) Above was what it looked like as we left!  I had to kiss it goodbye.

Christmas Eve

Back to Christmas Eve.  After our big meal that Waka fixed for us we decided to open the presents under the tree.  First we each played our own Santa and gave the people we had a special present for.  Here I am with my 2nd Christmas present from Jack in 33 years!  It is a lovely black down jacket.  His present from me was a tennis jacket I found at the recycle shop!  After that there were alot of presents still under the tree.  I had wrapped up white elephants/jokes/recycle stuff and whatever I thought would be fun.  Starting with Ojiisan he could chose a present.  On the third photo you can see he got a pair of boxer shorts with Winnie the Pooh on them.  He said he didn't need or want them,  Okay I told him to just wait.  Then we went down the list by age and we could either chose a new present or exchange and take away someone elses present and then the person who was left empty handed could chose another new present.  When it got to Andy, he took away Ojiisan's Winnie shorts!  Anyway it was lots of fun and several presents were left on my dining table that no one would take home!  Well, I might wrap them up for next year!

Who Do I look like?

Above is a photo of Uncle Andy when he was small.  Looks alot like Nami!  Then below is a photo of Koji the day after his birth with his older brother Andy.  He was over 9 lbs. so Nami looked like him when she was about 2 months old!
Below Nami is sleeping beside the first passport of her daddy.  Sure can't tell looking at the photo if it is Koji or Nami!

Nami loves sleeping being held by Grammy.  I hope that is what she calls me.  My Mom was always Granny, and I can't use that as that is reserved for her memory.  But I think Grammy is good.
Koji wanted to sleep downstairs where we could leave the heat on and keep the temperature even for baby.  So we pulled out the hide-a-bed sofa in the piano room.  There was no room to walk on either side and came out to within 2 feet of the sliding door into the front room, but it worked and we enjoyed having them close.  Koji and Katsura put up cushions at the other side for their feet and made the be king-sized.  Nami sleeps between them.  Of course she is not getting spoiled.

4 generations

Above are 3 generations of Oyome sans (ladies married to a man and taking his family name and position of wife of the future head of the family)  Obaachan was a Koizumi, I was Carlson, Katsura was Matsuda.  Only little Nami is a real Iizuka.  Actually Koji is second son, but we feel there is no Chonan (oldest son with privileges) preference...I call both my lovely DIL my Oyomesan.
4 generations of Iizukas.  Nami is the first great granddaughter of Ojiisan.  He will have another next month when his second son will also have a daughter.

Kamakura/Dec.27

We attended church in Kamakura as Koji's classmate was having his baby dedicated that day there and we were visiting Andy there anyway.  Here are the classmates with their wives and babies--who will also be classmates someday!  
Here are the proud grandmothers and grandfathers with the great grandmother of Sara
In the afternoon we walked up the mountain behind the temple near Andy's house.  It was about 40 minutes each way.  Here we are on top.  Jack had the precious one most of the walk.
It was a great walk with lovely weather and view.  I was worried about my knees giving out but it was enough of a variety that I had no trouble.
At the top was a little snack shop.