I just have to being to tell you how much I love Christmas. Maybe it is because my mom always made such a huge deal out of Christmas. The first year that Troy was in the family he about fell over when my mom decorated the house! A total of 8 Christmas trees!!! That was not even her record high! I think the most trees I have ever counted in our house would be 13. Literally, one in every room! Not to mention the wreaths, garlands, and all the outdoor decor. And then the presents… omg the presents. My mom would begin shopping on the day after Thanksgiving and not stop until the day before Christmas. There would be so many gifts that they would explode from under our 8 trees and spill into the floor. To make the whole thing funnier… my sister, father, and I were expert package shakers! We can shake pretty much any box and tell you what is in it! My mom loves the surprise, so we were ruining it for her. She started numbering the packages on the bottom and kept hidden a secret list with whose names corresponded to the numbers. That made things a little more tricky!! Quite literally we would begin opening gifts on Dec 1 and not stop until Christmas day. Even on Christmas day we would open gifts from early in the morning until late late evening! There were just a TON of gifts.

And stockings! My mom always outdid herself on the stockings. They usually had a theme. All the little gifts inside them were wrapped! My mom must have gone through 10 rolls of wrapping paper per year! Even the gift wrap was coordinated to the tree and theme. I was trying to remember all the Christmas themes that we had over the years and I can’t. I wish I had pictures of them to show to my kids. Better yet I wish I was super creative like her! Most of her designs were done with little to no money. She has a way of reusing everything multiple times that never ceases to amaze me.

I know that most would think she was crazy but that is how I remember Christmas… over the top. I loved every minute of it! We didn’t have many “family traditions” and Christmas was one time of year that we had traditions for. Every Christmas Eve we would visit my Nana’s house and have dinner. Not that it was always traditional… but there was always Herb’s tomato spaghetti and cheesecake. The years when our Florida family came home there was sure to be plenty of Burgers and Shakes burgers, TONS of pickles, and shakes of course! Our family is not the most picturesque family but they were ours.

I can remember sitting in the front living room, the one that no one ever went in except on Christmas. The blue carpet and furniture. The tree that kept getting smaller every year but there was always a heaping amount of angel hair on it and when you sat near it your butt itched all night long! There were the mirrors that lined the hallway… never really understood those but oh well! We rarely left before midnight and it was still hard to sleep through the night until 7 am the next day to wait on Santa. To this day it is hard for me to sleep on Christmas Eve. Every Christmas morning I suddenly turn into this child who remembers those holiday evenings. I find myself dying to wake up my kids and drag them into the living room!!

I hope that my kids remember our Christmases that way. I hope that they remember all the little details and how much fun it was. I hope they laugh at how crazy I was to decorate with multiple trees and the piles of presents. But most of all I hope they remember how much we love each other no matter what the seasons entailed.

This year we are not sure where we will be on Christmas. Home, in the hospital at UK, in Chicago… the truth is that if we have the opportunity to have a surgery done for Kyleigh over Christmas, we will take it. I hope that the boys will never remember the birthdays and holidays that we have missed in the past two years. If they do remember, I hope they know that we did it because we love them and their sister so much that we were willing to sacrifice something that we hold so dear… Christmas… in hopes that very soon we would be able to have a normal life again.

In reality I am sure I bring this guilt on myself. I am sure that the boys will not remember or care, but these are things you think about. It would not be a responsible parent if I did not consider the big picture.

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