We Wish You A Merry Christmas

  It took a while, but I finally have the pictures from Christmas time.

They turned out great, but, this family reunion almost didn't happen at all. It was actually my plan to invite Keigo over for dinner to break the ice between him and Itachi. I know, I know, I shouldn't have tried to force them to be friends, and as soon as I made the suggestion, Itachi was less than pleased.
 

He wasn't loud or angry, but he did point out how unfair it was that since I didn't do any pictures for Thanksgiving, (which I had intended, but somehow never got around to) he hadn't seen his family in a long time and that he would prefer that to being forced into making nice with Keigo for the holidays.

At that moment I realized I was being completely selfish and I apologized to him immediately for not even thinking about how he'd feel about not having seen Sasuke in forever. So I immediately scratched my plans to invite Keigo and instead invited the fam and the kids...

Keigo didn't make a huge deal out of it, but I could feel that he was a little peeved that I basically reneged on him for Christmas, because I mean that was shitty- but I promised him we'd do New Years together, and he seemed okay with that. Still though, I felt kinda like a dick for making those plans and then doing him like that...I don't like hurting people's feelings 🙁

After I had agreed that it was definitely time for a family reunion, the next step was to figure out where we were gonna have it. We couldn't have it at the house, because the treehouse is too small. We have a dining table outside that we used for Thanksgiving last year, but that was while the weather was still warm enough to have dinner al fresco. We're at the tail end of December and it is COLD. 

Last Year's Spread

It was lit

In the end I landed on a more temporary solution. If there is an equivalent in real life, you could say I "rented a venue" for this; but in reality, I went to a sandbox and rezzed the Christmas room, if you will 😋 and decorated it from top to bottom, with everything we'd need for the dinner.

In the end Korra opted to only bring the youngest baby (Sasuke's😏 & chile thats a long story), leaving the other children with Tenzin and Pema for the day, which I was a little disappointed about at first, but after how smoothly things went, I was ultimately grateful for. 

Once Korra, Naruto, and Sasuke arrived with the baby, Itachi was already hard at work in the kitchen working on a mean Christmas ham.

Host(ess)ing was a piece of cake, because we all knew each other, with the exception of Cloud and Naruto/Korra. He and Sasuke had met unofficially some time ago, which...ahem... was a possible point of contention, but Sasuke was surprisingly chill about it.

Conversation  and wine flowed easily, and comfortably, while we all bonded and had some laughs about the past and we were just genuinely happy to share our time together this holiday.

I only wanted to do about 3 pictures, but in the end I felt that wasn't enough to capture the memories we made. So it took a while, but it was worth it to see the genuine smiles on everybody's faces. I'm happy I took the time to finish them properly.

Merry Christmas, Family.