Living Together Parenting Diary | Celebration✨ First Time Participating in New Year's Sales!!

The New Year has already begun,
and three days have passed in the blink of an eye.

To everyone working early in the New Year,
thank you so much for your hard work.

By the way,
my spouse and I both work in social welfare.

If we were transferred to a facility with night shifts,
New Year's holidays wouldn't apply to us.

Right now, both of us
work at facilities that only operate during the day,
so thankfully,
we have a decent amount of time off during the year-end and New Year period.

However, our New Year's holiday routine
is the same every year.

On the 1st and 2nd, we have guests over for New Year's greetings, or we visit relatives.
On the 3rd, the whole family goes to the first shrine visit of the year.

This
has been our New Year's tradition until now.

When it comes to New Year's sales,
we would only go to a nearby shop for a little bit.

Since my mother is with us, we can't really look around at a leisurely pace.

That's how we usually are, but
this year was a little different.

After finishing our visits with relatives on the 1st,
and our first shrine visit on the 2nd,

we decided that
on the 3rd, for the first time,
we would travel a bit further to join the New Year's sales!

My mother wanted to watch the Ekiden relay race,
so she stayed home this time.

Going out with my wife and children
during the New Year's holiday
was a first for us.

The children each bought things they wanted
within the limits of their pocket money.

Instead of lunch, we all had crepes.

"Crepes aren't a real meal, are they?"
is something people often say, but today it was okay.

We decided on what we wanted to do
by ourselves, and we did it.

Well, since we were with the kids,
we couldn't see what we wanted to see,
and honestly, we couldn't take our time (lol).

Even so,
being able to see the children's happy smiles
and the fact that we were able to "do what we wanted to do"
made me very happy.

Everything is crowded during the New Year,
and there's no need to go out of your way to go anywhere.

Of course, that way of thinking exists too.

However,
there is a big difference between
choosing not to go after having done it,
and not being able to go because you've never done it.

New Year's 2026.
It's just a New Year's sale.

But, right at the start of the new year,
I was able to do something I wanted to do,
and it was a moment that felt a little fulfilling.

※While living together,
there are things I've been able to do,
and there are feelings I've kept bottled up for a long time.
I plan to write about that
in another article.