Life this week in-between Christmas and New Year

Life around our place has been very cruisy. Not much getting done beyond the basics. We're sleeping late and going to bed late. And getting a little social again.

On Wednesday we went to see Rogue One with a Finnish family of boys from CAJ. All enjoyed it. I did too...but I was a bit sad nonetheless. I'd tell you why, but don't want to spoil your fun if you haven't seen it yet.

Yesterday we had an English/Finnish family join us for morning tea. The main attraction was for our English guest to enjoy his first Fruit Mince Pies of the season! But we had a good couple of hours just sitting around and chatting. Their two children had a great time playing with our old Duplo and Kitchen toys. It was lovely. In the afternoon David and I ran away for an afternoon tea date at a coffee shop. That was really good too!

Today we've got a Japanese/American family joining us for lunch (I must finish this quickly so that I can get to making the soup I've planned). They've got three young children too, so the toys will be coming out again. We're hoping for some great conversational times with them too.

Tomorrow we're hoping to go for a family bike ride, but the jury is out as to whether we'll be able to motivate all the kids to join us. Then tomorrow night we'll join with more international friends to celebrate the New Year.

It's great to have the time to be more hospitable. It's wonderful to have friends around at a time when we might most miss being with our families.

Though I do have bits and pieces of work that need to be worked on or at least monitored too:

• I've written/desk-top published three newsletters this week
• Believe it or not people still contact OMF Japan via our website at this time of the year (I guess they have more time to think about the future...) So I'm still answering emails.
• Our magazine design/proofreading team is (supposed to) be working on getting the Winter issue done. That inevitably means emails to me with questions. I'm yet to check what our proofreader has been finding.
• Articles for the Spring issue are due in two weeks and some are already dribbling in.
• Never mind the shopping and cooking for the family...that's a given!

But for the most part I've been relaxing. One day I'll get back to vacuuming the house and cleaning the toilet...