Holiday Traditions

Bloomington, Indiana. My grandmother's kitchen. That's where my mom was sitting just a few minutes ago as I was talking to her on the phone. Her and my dad and the 3 puppies just got in yesterday after quite a long drive. She told me about the barbecue, baked beans, potato salad and jello they just finished up. And then of course, you have to top that off with a piece of Nana's homemade blackberry cobbler. Wow that sure brings back some good memories. Every year my parents, my brother and I would drive the 10 to 12 hours to my grandparents house to spend Christmas. My aunt, uncle and cousins were usually already there waiting for us, and we would all have a big meal. Chili or vegetable soup the first night, barbecue the next. Hehe. Nana's candy and fudge was always sitting out on the cabinet, calling to you to come take a nibble. The days leading up to Christmas would be full of excitement, seeing all of the family that you haven't seen since last year and hearing, "Oh my how you've grown!" The girls go shopping and to movies. The guys lay in the living room floor watching basketball games. Then finally...Christmas morning would come!! The tree always had an embarrassing number of presents under it but...oh how exciting it was!! Of course, my family was one of those take turns families, so the present un-wrapping always lasted a few hours. After we cleaned up, we would either get ready to go to my great Aunt Toot's house, or start preparing food at Nana's for the HUGE Christmas lunch! (They take turns every year). My very favorite food of the day, and I think everyone else in my family would agree, is Memaw's noodles! And then when I was real young, we would always end the day by going on a terrific hay ride through the woods pulled by Gene's tractor. It would be freezing but SO much fun! That night we would all crowd together in Memaw and Great Grandad's living room for more present opening. When they passed, that tradition kinda seemed to come to a close. And that's ok. Because I will always have those beautiful memories.

I never knew a Christmas not spent in Indiana until 2006, my first married Christmas. John was about to deploy to Iraq so we chose to spend that year with his family. I can't deny that I was a bit sad not to be having my traditions that Christmas. Then the next year I would have gladly spent Christmas day in a cell as long as John could have been with me. He was still deployed and not even my family's traditions could help make me feel better. But little did I know, the next year I was going to be 8 months pregnant and living in Okinawa, Japan! Obviously, we were unable to travel back for Christmas. It was so very strange to both of us spending the day just the 2 of us with only 10 or so presents under the tree. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves! Haha. We were unable to make it back again this Christmas, but we have a bouncing, high energy, almost 11 month old to share it with this year, and we are SO excited to see him with all of his MANY MANY presents that we've been collecting at the post office over the past month. For the first time last night, I wrote on a gift tag, "From Santa Clause". Boy was that a strange feeling! But I'm sure I'll be doing it for many years to come!

I don't know where we'll be next year, or the next, or the next. Being in the military, it's kinda hard to plan these things. I would like to think that I most certainly will be going back to Indiana to spend Christmas with my extended family once again and share our traditions with Izaak and my future kids. Of course I miss my family and our traditions at this time of year, but for now, I want to make sure that John and I start some of our own traditions that our kids, grandkids and maybe even great grandkids will always have fond memories of just like my Nana and Grandad did for us. I found this quote that I really liked and it really kinda fits my life right now, so I'll leave you with that. Merry Christmas everyone!! Be sure to make lots of good memories this year, wherever you are and whoever you're spending it with.

"Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag." ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

P.S. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures with me here in Japan of Christmas in the old days, but I will leave you with some much cuter pictures and my reason for looking forward to many more Christmases wherever they may be spent!