Holiday Fun

Off for some wonderful holiday goodness today!  Me and eighteen (yes, you read that correctly) other people are headed in town for a holiday show today.  And I'm related to all by four of them.  No joke.  This is going to be a whole bucket full of family fun time!  Oh, and we're all women... Don't know if that makes all that much of a difference.

We used to do things like this all the time, but lately it's dwindled.  I remember seeing the Nutcracker every year with my mom, sister, and aunts.  It wasn't Christmas until we put on the dresses with the holiday tights (I hate tights) and made the trek to the Wang Theater.  My favorite part was when the tree grew.  How magical.

My uncle is dying of cancer.  He's been putting up a good fight for the past three years, but he's not doing super great these days.  Now my mom is dying of cancer, but she's still at the beginning of her road and has a lot of fight left in her.  Another uncle is in remission after nearly dying several times two years ago.  Before my uncles and my mom, nobody in either of my parents family's suffered from this horrible disease.  We sort of were hit all at once.  The reason for this depressing paragraph is that it really has made my family realize what's important.  We value our time together a lot more now than we did before.  We made more of a conscious effort to spend time together making memories that we'll have forever.

So this year we're going to see a Christmas show.  It's the earliest show they have so my mom is able to go and still make it home for a nap.  We were going to go out to a restaurant, but it would have been too much for my mom and too much for the restaurant (party of 19!).  So instead we'll go back to one of my aunts' homes and have a pizza party instead.  Then if my mom needs to go home to rest, I can take her home without an issue.

I hope that we get a tree this weekend.  I'm going to push to go tomorrow.  My parents have a Christmas party to go to (it's a family party but half of the family wasn't invited) but I'm hoping we can quickly pick out a tree maybe even tonight so my sister and I can decorate it while they are at the party and when they come home the house will be finished.  I'm also going to try to get everything wrapped by the end of the weekend.  How nice would that be?

I'm proud of myself for getting so much done.  Normally I'm shopping Christmas Eve and wrapping gifts at midnight.  Finishing not only my stuff but my mom's as well a whole week early is amazing for me.  I'm pretty proud.  We'll have a nicely decorated house, a tree with wrapped presents under it, the whole nine yards!  And we'll be able to enjoy a nice Christmas and make nice memories.  I don't want a disappointing Christmas, one that's so different from all the others that we can't help but think about why that is.

I hope you're all having good luck with your holiday preparations!