Driving home from my second (of three) church services today I started thinking about memories from Christmas.  I heard somebody say once, you aren’t planning a wedding, you’re planning the memory of a wedding.  I think many holidays and special events are like that.  Sure, live in the moment, all that jazz, but honestly, that’s for the day to day.  Holidays are for the memory making, right?  I turned down a Christmas Day gig because I wanted my Christmas Day memory to be of waking up next to my husband and hanging out with him all day long.  I can work any day.

(I wanted this to be on our Christmas card, since it’s a Christmas themed photo, but somebody vetoes it.)

Memories from childhood: 

Singing around the piano

Loading up the car and driving to PA and OH. 

Grandma Miller trying to give us bags of sandwiches and Mom trying to get her to not bother.  Us eating those sandwiches in the car AND stopping for lunch.

Playing endless games—Acquire, Rook, Pit, Dutch Blitz, Monopoly

Playing violin duets with Leslie—for the family, for the church, for ourselves (Christmas Trio and the medley, need I say more?)

Eating so many cookies and candy in Ohio one year that I had to throw up…in the kitchen sink.  Gosh, I remember I felt better after that!

Ice skating, playing in the snow, having fun with siblings and cousins

Date pudding and 7 layer salad

Leslie crying over her presents when she didn’t like them (I probably did this too, but that’s not MY memory) 😉

Memories from a little bit older:

Coming home to see how much Carrie had grown

Dad joking (I think) that we should just keep all the presents wrapped and save them for next year

Cheese grits and cinnamon rolls

Being up late playing violin at various church services

Spending my first Christmas NOT with my immediate family.  That was really the point I realized I was an adult, and my siblings too—when we started spending Christmas elsewhere—like we are again this Christmas

Getting snowed in on Long Island and driving overnight from New York to St Louis in an overpacked Honda Fit with two of our best friends.

Losing my grandfather to pancreatic cancer (not all the memories here are happy ones, but I can be grateful for the happy memories of him from all the years before—I can’t think about past Christmases without thinking of him though.)

Interesting fact:  I never believed in Santa.  No one in our family ever did.  I was probably that kid who ruined it for the other kids…I didn’t realize until I was older that there were actually kids who believed in Santa—I assumed it was all a facade.

Anyway, thanks for reading my blog today, yesterday, in the past, and in the future!  Merry Christmas to you!