It's an annual Christmas tradition for us to play Risk, and this year again, Jenny defeated the 3 guys.
This was Anna's first Christmas, and she was all decked out in red.
Ellie employed her active imagination to build a camel. The frame is a quilt rack, and the stick is the camel's head.
Randee is showing Ellie pictures of her new grandson Jakob.
Ellie kept Randee busy playing games, and later got Rich to read her a book. Anna didn't want to miss what was going on.
Ellie and Summer got to select a few flowers from the garden.
When Gary & Brenda's girls come over, there has to be time for "dress up." Notice the bruise on Ellie's forehead? Just a couple of days before her birthday, she tripped stepping on to their driveway, and received a bump on the forehead and skinned her nose. Doesn't that sound typical of little kids?
Great Grandpa Larsen get's to watch Anna for a bit.
After presents, we enjoyed Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes, with a row spelling Ellie's name, that Jenny had prepared for the party.
Anna has this certain way of showing her joy at feeding time.
During our stay in Japan, we were hosted by the Bengtson family in their home located on the seminary campus. They were very gracious hosts, and it was enjoyable to get reacquainted after all these years away.
While I was delivering a series of lectures to pastors, Joy was able to cross the island to visit with Kazuko Sasaki, who worked with us in our years of church-planting in Sendai. Kazuko planned for them to spend a couple of days near a mountain that Joy remembers from her childhood.
When Joy returned, and my first series of lectures ended, we drove to the north side of Sendai to visit our former neighbors. They seemed not to have aged at all. We stopped at our next door neighbor's home and visited with Mrs. Okada, her son Yuya, and her son Katsuhiro's two children.
Here are Mr. & Mrs. Kaneyama from across the street, along with the two Okada tykes.
Mr. and Mrs. Ohnuma treated us to a home-cooked meal of tempura, and while there we were able to see their son Seiki, who was a close friend of Tim's back in the day.
We were beginning to feel like we'd never left Japan.
On another afternoon we visited Miki Hayashi and her two children. Her mother, Hideko Satoh also dropped in to see us. Hideko was our neighborhood Japanese "mom" in many ways.
It was a real treat to worship on a Sunday morning at New Life, the church we planted on the north side of Sendai. A number of people stayed to have lunch with us and visit, and to pose for a group photo.
Though now living hours away from Sendai, Mie Satoh came with her two children to be at New Life that morning and visit with us.
An old building in the downtown area.
Kids returning to class from a dip in the pool.
The Christian Martyrs Monument near the Hirose River.
Hydrangeas at the Shinto shrine. 
Bamboo groves like this one are not only beautiful to look at, but are believed to be safer places to go in an earthquake. You see them often in older neighborhoods.
We had lunch in this traditional Japanese restaurant. I was impressed by this design on one of the walls (below).
Temple gardens.
Joy is standing next to a tea house in the gardens.
Pagodas, like the one above, typically enshrine Buddhist relics.
Temple bells are longer than western ones, and emit a lower-pitched, more somber tone.
Shop sign in the shopping arcade in Sendai. Didn't know freedom of the soul was so easy now did you?!
