christmas 2008

's wonderful! 's marvelous! That's how my Christmas was, and I hope yours was the same. What was wonderful about my Christmas? It was wonderfully traditional, and although we missed mom, we still managed to enjoy the season. The entire time, though, I couldn't help but wonder how different it will be next year with a nine-month old crawling around (and a hopefully well-trained, one-year-old rottweiler and a fifteen-year-old cat).

Our Christmas season started off with the annual Christmas party hosted by Jen and Bob, followed by Christmas Eve appetizers and dinner (this year at Ryan and Rachel's), opening presents with Al Christmas morning, Christmas dinner with Al's family at his brother's house, and ended with Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village last night (I've only done this once before, so technically it's not "traditional"). In between all of those were extra visits with Al's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew in from New York and an impromptu "baby shower lunch" thrown by my female in-laws since Kim won't be able to make it for the real thing. Oh, and a really bad cold and body temperatures ranging from 96.3 to 96.8 that made me feel a little weak and freaked, but didn't interfere too much with the festivities.

The festivities were/are so much, in fact, that even though I've been wanting to go to the movies since October, we still haven't had the time to go. So in the next three days that Al still has off, I'm hoping we can sneak it in. It will have to come sometime in between my physical therapy, the annual New Year's party at Del and Nicole's, and a football gathering at Log and Jen's on Thursday (which honestly I'm not too thrilled about, just because I'm not a football fan and we'll just have finished "partying" twelve hours before the gathering...maybe I'll just send Al and take another nap, which I've been doing frequently these days). Right now, I'm supposed to be straightening things up around the house and Al is working on emptying the baby's room, formerly his computer/television/guitar/poster room, in preparation for the painting I'll start late this week or early next week. And that's all of our news. Deliciously mundane, and although it's the holidays, "normal." After this week, my actual "normal" reality will start, and I can't wait. It'll change soon (sometime on, before, or after March 12), but it'll just be a new kind of normal. And the thought of that makes me happy.