smith stories.: Holidays 2013

Well, the holidays are over for the year. Personally, I usually LOVE the whole holiday season. However, this year I struggled with getting into the 'mood'. We still put our Christmas decorations up after Thanksgiving and we still did our advent traditions. We read through the Christmas Story so many times that the kids have it memorized. We celebrated Christmas with my parents and Blake's family. There were fun gifts and awesome food that I didn't have to do much preparing for. We even got to spend New Year's Eve with Blake this year and we spent it celebrating with our Redemption Community group. Our 9th wedding anniversary was special in that we included the kids this year, taking them with us to Pappadeaux - a seafood restaurant, that we all really enjoyed. Over all, this holiday season was a complete success. But somehow, I missed out on the 'excitement' part. I had a couple of moments of joy while studying the true meaning of advent and focusing on the coming of Christ and our awaiting His return - because really that's the whole point of EVERYTHING, right?

I think my struggle with not 'feeling' the season this year was due to the fact that, with every passing year, Christmas seems to come around more often than I'm ready for. I like to get excited for things, but honestly, I felt as if I had just put away Christmas decorations… and then had to unpack them again. I commented on wishing I had the option to 'skip' the holidays this year - kind of like an opt-out. Just this year. Just to give me more time so that by the time next Christmas rolls around, the excitement will have time to build. I believe I chose to not get excited about this year's Christmas because I want to be excited about next year's. Who knows?

I will admit that watching Evie and Jackson get so excited definitely helps the holiday season be more fun. And I know they feel as if it's never Christmas and takes forever to get here. So, I did my best to focus on helping make the season fun for their sake. I really don't want to be considered a Grinch. ;) So, I did, and I made it through, and I'm thankful that it is over… till next year. Because by then, we're going have a 7-8 month old baby and it will be his first Christmas and that will make the season even more special!