December

December has come and gone. It was such a magical month with Uriah - all the lights and music and Christmas hype... We worked our way through an advent calendar that lead to Christmas crafts all over all walls, too many treats, Christmas movies on repeat and stacks of Christmas books from the library. He was too young to understand much, if any, of Christmas last year, but this year he was such a fun age! And it's only going to get better, too! I loved the holiday season so much more through his eyes. I was worried that Stephen's schedule (he was getting one day off a week, was on call Christmas Eve and worked Christmas day) was really going to throw me for a loop, emotionally. This was our first Christmas away from family and I assumed the lack of normalcy was going to make it less, Christmas-y. Much to my surprise, though, it was as close as we could get to perfect. Maybe because this is our new normal and that's starting to feel normal...? Celebrating Christmas a day later turned out to be such a gift. While everyone else was back to busy - taking down their tree, returning gifts, after Christmas sale shopping, back to work - we got to share one extra day of Christmas magic. It was so simple and so quiet and so truly wonderful. Of course we missed our families, but it was such good timing for us to spend our first Christmas just the four of us in our own home - we needed that. We did have a special visitor the month of December, though - my dad came to celebrate his birthday with us! Having him here made the holidays feel a little more like the holidays. We took him to the beach, toured campus, drug him to Target, included him in art projects and Lego play... The kids love their Papa and I loved having him around to keep me company. The in-between parts of the month were filled with our usual errands, park dates, hospital visits and days spent playing in our jammies. It was a good month and a great way to end what had been a good, long, hard year. And now, on to January!