Thanks for Family

I know I place an abnormally large amount of importance on the Christmas holiday, and I think I’m going to have to blame my parents on this one (it always comes back to the parents, doesn’t it?). When I was growing up, Christmas at my house was always amazing. My parents went out of their way to make the holiday special for my sisters and I, even going so far as to get up at 4am on certain Christmas mornings, with no prompting from me or Jess (even as a kid, I was not excited about a 4am wake-up call, Christmas morning or otherwise…Brigid’s sleep habits are starting to make much more sense to me now…), so we could celebrate Christmas before my dad headed off for his 24-hour shift at the fire station at 8am. Basically, he (and my mom, of course) would stay up until all hours of the night to get things ready, try to squeeze in an hour or two of sleep, then get us up to open presents, before he’d head out to work while the rest of us took a nap.

My dad was awesome. Guess I should have been more patient on the flip side of this scenario, all of those times when he had to work on Christmas Eve, and they made me wait until he got home at 8:30am to open presents on Christmas morning, huh? Man, kids are brats…

Anyway, I have great memories of decorating trees, wrapping presents, and listening to the Time Life Christmas music collection around the house. I have great memories of making my mom listen to the Christmas rap from the more contemporary Christmas CD we kept in the car, even though my mom would have preferred to skip it every time. I have great memories of driving around town to look at Christmas lights on the way home from my grandparents’ house on Christmas Eve. I have great memories of Christmas in general.

And I want Brigid to have these memories, so I may go just a bit overboard with things (That snorting sound you just heard? That would be Steve…I think he would argue that I may be understating my obsession slightly.). But, as my friend Mandi so lovingly reminded me earlier this week, Thanksgiving still stands between me and the promised land of Christmas cookies and Charlie Brown’s sad little tree, and while it is not the same, I should give it the respect it deserves.

And yes, despite how it may seem here, I do think that Thanksgiving deserves respect, because any time I have an excuse to take a week off of work to drive up to Indiana to spend time with my family, it’s a big deal. And I am so freaking excited to see everybody, I can’t even begin to tell you. So, I promise to put a moratorium on all of the Christmas talk for the next week and a half and to celebrate Thanksgiving the way it is meant to be celebrated.

With lots of family, lots of thanks, and a nice pair of stretchy pants. And the Time Life Christmas collection, of course. I am still me, after all!