Oh the Memories!

I can't believe anyone is still even looking at this blog since I haven't written in months!  Must be some kind of fluke....

I have been busily crocheting, no sew tutu making, and just generally keeping myself busy.  John and I had a great and wonderful time with my middle sister and fam in Boise! I LOVE THAT TOWN/CITY!!!!!  It is huge but doesn't feel like it.  We rested, we shopped, we laughed, we ate, we laughed some more, we visited, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Didn't want to come home......

The tree is up and I like it with only lights on it so much I think I will just leave it that way. If any decorations get put on it I think I will let whomever wants to put them on, put them on....we have a wreath and one giant nutcracker out and yes, that is the extent of our decorating for this year.  I have been thinking about Christmas pasts lately.  I suppose thats what happens when you are driving along listening to Christmas music and "I'll Be Home For Christmas" is what is playing and you pull up behind a rig with Kansas plates...Yeah...you know what happened after that....

We have had so many wonderful years of this holiday.  Our first Christmas John and I went out with one of his brothers to get a tree, cutting it down off the bank up a forest service road.  We had no decorations, no tree stand, no money for anything and yet I remember the hilarity of taking that tree into the house only to find it twice the size of our room, much like in Christmas Vacation....we put it in a pot we found outside with a bunch of dirt, had an ornament party and called it good.  I wish I had pics of that first tree...I didn't own a camera.  He bought me a coat and I loved it I got him a puppy and he loved her...named her Chrissy Christmas puppy (her lifespan was pretty short, we lived by the highway).  Our second year I was pregnant and due any day with our oldest son Matthew.  He bought me a microwave, I have pictures of that year. Our house was a tiny single wide trailer with roll out windows and our traditions were still unformed.  We spent Christmas eve with his family at that time, opening up huge stockings worth of gag gifts and the next day was with my family, opening up our regular gifts.  Matthew was born three days later.  The year that Ryan was born, a week before Christmas, John and I needed a tree as we hadn't gotten one yet so he and his buddy and coworker Goob got one on the way home from work.  We decorated it quickly and headed out to Eugene to stay with my parents, it was the first year we had together with him clean and sober. We shopped for presents while mom babysat Matt and Kaylee who were 4 and 2 and we then went and looked at Christmas lights.  Ryan was born in a mad rush and flurry as we barely made it to the hospital but I still remember seeing Christmas lights on the way there from the back seat of the car while I happily labored along.  It was a wonderful Christmas.  It was the year Kaylee got her big white bear that has gone everywhere with her in her life.  Two years later we repeated the process with Aaron, 10 days before Christmas.  I don't recall being prepared at all for the holidays. I was due on Christmas day with him so was 10 days early, and I have never in my life been that far ahead of myself so I doubt I was ready.  The night he was born, exactly 22 years ago today, we were all together in the hospital room...My mom, Connie, and my friends Lisa and Nancy and a nurse and midwife...someone turned on Christmas music and Aaron was born, delivered by his father, amid the strains of "Oh Holy Night" coming out of the music player.  It was a wonderful moment.  And now I sit here in a quiet house, we no longer have little children of our own running around.  Many wonderful Christmas holidays have come and gone. Some of them wonderful and some painful.  Our first year without Matty was when he was stationed in England.  We "web cammed" with him...I cried every time I heard "I'll be home for Christmas" and every time I was alone.  I cried when Connie opened his present, an ornament of a replica of her dog Bisquit who is now old.  We watched him open his presents on camera, a goofy smile on his face and a 4 ft. tree next to him, I knew the minute that camera switched off my precious son would be alone in that room, oh gosh I so didn't want that camera to go off. Several years later we added Bryce to our numbers and by freak snow storm we had him with us for the first time, he and Kales weren't even married yet.  I found a video of that Christmas the other day, it was full of sound, people laughing, making noise and good cheer.  It was the first time we had had Matt home with us in a long time for Christmas.  It was wonderful.  A year later Ryan moved down to Florida to live with him and they didn't make it home for the holiday, we held a gingerbread house contest amongst the 5 of us, John, me, Kaylee, Bryce, and Aaron...we had to have a diversion from not having the guys here.  The following year we shared it long distance with a young lady named Lindsay who was to become part of our family!  Along the way Alexis joined the fray and for the past three years she too has been part of our traditions, even though she has only been married to Aaron for one of them.

We have had huge full houses for the holidays over the past 5 years so I suppose it was time to come full circle and go back to a small crowd.  I sit here now in a quiet house looking at a tree that has only lights on it (I couldn't bring myself to decorate it alone) and literally feel the quiet.  Its not a bad thing, it just IS.  We have had some wonderful Christmases and I know that this one will be special in its own right and it will be fun to see Ellie enjoy the day and see the presents we all got each other and finally find out who has who for names!  I love that part.

So as John plays his traditional Christmas music, Emmanuel, Christmas Shoes and other faves, I get to remember just how much I love my family and how much my family loves me.  I am so grateful to the Lord for the things He is doing in the lives of our kids and that we have been able to grow and learn together, to stretch out our hearts and hands and make room for three more people to join in and to incorporate us into their traditions.  We have such bounty.  So even as we so so so deeply miss our Kaylee, Bryce, Lucy, Brynlee and Avery (and you too our sweet Flexy) we celebrate the joys of being a family, maybe some of us far apart, but forever bound in our hearts!

Merry Christmas!