One week to holidays

 One week today we're headed for our annual winter week in the mountains. We're hoping for snow. I just looked at their weather forecast. Today is currently 4 degrees Celsius, but the forecast was "much warmer" than yesterday. Wonder what yesterday was?

Yakiniku — cooking your own meat.

For several years (does three count as several?) we went sledding during this holiday. Last year the sledding place had closed down, so we went ice skating. This year we're wondering about trying out a day of skiing. 


Despite having lived in Sapporo, the "snow capital" of Japan, for four years, only David went skiing and only once. In between pregnancies, tiny babies, and challenging preschoolers, I never ended up going. I've grass skiied (once) and water skiied (a number of times), but snow would be a new medium. We'll see. For people who aren't used to spending that much money, the prices are scary!

Beautiful rock walls of Karuizawa look fabulous with a 

coating of snow.

We'll definitely have to go back to the Yakiniku place we found during our summer week there. That was fun!


Most of all I'm looking forward to not having to make the boys do school stuff. Lack of concentration on the task has been the rule of the day in the last couple of weeks. Just concentrating enough to get toothpaste onto one's brush and to do a decent job of cleaning them, seems too much, let alone completing homework for school and piano practice!


For today it is back to trying to finish one pair of tracksuit pants (US=sweat pants), wrapping presents for Australian family, piano practice with a boys, and maybe, just maybe, some more biscuit baking (US=cookie)!