Christmas 2009

I don't have new photos for this years Christmas celebration. The camera has been hiding from me for a few days and I am not good at Hide-and-seek. I feel bad that I wasn't able to capture some moments of glee to savor for later. But, my kids say really funny things. Things that are only funny because they are little, if an adult said things like they say, it wouldn't be very good. For instance, Andrew was in the bath last night. I was sitting just outside the door checking my email (away from the bath water, but close enough to see and hear him), he started saying over and over "I have a hole in my bum, mom, I have a hole in my bum!" He was so excited about it. I thought I would pass out from the hilarity of it. Well, now he knows that he has a hole in his bum.

Samantha, last year at the beginning of winter, when the warm coats and boots were just being taken out of the closets, told me that she had Emily's nuts. I was thinking, Emily's nuts? Did Emily have a bag of almonds or something? It turns out she thought she was being really sneaky and she was wearing Emily's snowboots. When I reminded her they were called boots she said, "oh ya, I have Emily's boots", and giggled off to her play with her toys.

Emily is too sensible these days to do anything that might be a little embarrassing. But I do remember that she was so excited to go to church the Sunday after Thanksgiving one year. I think she was about 4 years old. Since being excited for church was about the last thing I expected her to be, I asked her what she was so happy about. She said she was excited for church so we could go have some more chicken. When I questioned her why she thought we were going to be having chicken at church she responded, "we eat chicken at church with our cousins, remember?" We had our Thanksgiving dinner at the church that year with "chicken" aka turkey. Too bad we don't get "chicken" at church every week, everyone (except the cook) would be much happier campers on Sunday. LOL!

We had a great Christmas. I got a beautiful new watch, Mike got some great new jeans, Emily got Zhu Zhu pets, Samantha got lots of Barbies, and Andrew got a pirate ship. We also got a new TV, but have to return it because the LCD screen is cracked. It got damaged in shipping, but of course when we recieved it, just just wrapped the giant box and didn't open it. Hopefully the new one won't take weeks to get here. I was really looking forward to playing Rock Band and watching some great action movies with a great picture. Our old TV is so bad, the color is off, and the picture has even started shifting to the left, it's super annoying. So trivial, but annoying.

There is definately a huge part of me missing this year. I have loved the celebrations, and songs, and excitement of my kids; all of that has been wonderful. My dad's huge presence has been missed like crazy. On Christmas Eve, I kept looking around feeling like someone was missing. I kept looking around for my kids, and for my siblings, neices and nephews. Everyone seemed to be accounted for, but someone or something was missing and I couldn't find it. I just couldn't shake the feeling that someone wasn't there who was supposed to be there. Today, I keep feeling like my dad is just around the corner and I can't catch up with him. Like I just missed him at the store, or he left out of town and I didn't get a chance to give him a hug before he left. My spirit is confused about it. I had dreams about things like that when my brother Sam died. I feel lost.