Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  It has been a great holiday year at our house this year, and I do know how wonderfully blessed and lucky we are!  It's very odd to have two kids so far about in ages.  It's almost like we have two only children.  We have a second grader and a one year old and sometimes I feel like we have one or the other.  It's been tricky to shift my gears from reading and writing and homework to can she feed herself with a sippy cup and a spoon.  Sometimes I think, "Hey!, I've already tackled and conquered that."  Only to remember of course, that while one child has, we still have another to go.  Oh me, on my, why do I mentally move on when reality is still coping with actuality?

This year was a budget Christmas, and it wasn't too difficult because I knew it would be and I planned ahead and started purchasing gifts in early November.  The only problem with pre-purchasing your gifts is that as new toy commercials hit the television, Laney would change her mind about what she wanted.  I found myself thinking, several times, "I hope she remembers she liked that last month!"  Alas, there was nothing to worry about as Laney is a very gracious and kind 7 year old, and Christmas Eve found her saying to herself, while rapidly throwing wrapping paper over her shoulder, "This is the best dream I ever had!"  I'm not sure why she said she was dreaming in the middle of opening the gifts, but I'm going to take that as her dreams were coming true and that toy she got was beyond her imagination.  Lindsay of course, had no clue what was going on, and she carried around her first present for 10 minutes before moving on to carrying around the second gift.

Now that we live far away from my family again, I found myself thinking of them several times and missing them a lot for our Christmas traditions.  Arlin and I don't really have any Christmas traditions because we have usually spent every holiday with either his family or mine.  The years when we haven't gone anywhere in particular, have been very few and so we now have the challenge of setting up our own traditions.  I think it will get better as time goes on, but we found our Christmas to be very quiet and full of baby naps and quiet playing of the DS by Laney.  We ate and ate and watch some movies to entertain the adults, but it doesn't feel the same without a large gathering of family.

While it has been a good year, I am so glad this year is almost over with it's ups and downs and challenges galore.  We are facing froward and moving on at my house, and I'm already planning to see all the good things 2011 has in store for me!  Merry Christmas everyone!