Long time no see, hive! I have no excuses for my 4-month break except one: life. It got crazy, busy, and in the way of fun things like writing on here. As for a quick update, (which will tie into the title of this post—promise), my husband went on a 2-month business trip to Arizona, and while he was there the girls and I drove all the way home (from Georgia to New Mexico) and stayed there for a couple months visiting family and friends. Then we picked up Mister Rabbit in Arizona and the four of us drove all the way back to Georgia. If only our adventure stopped there! We were home for a week and then we packed up again and drove down to….wait for it…the “Happiest Place on Earth!”
See? I told you we’ve been busy! That’s just one reason why we’re staying put for the holidays. Traveling is tiring, but traveling with two kids under three is downright exhausting; we’re still recovering from our trips. There’s also the other factor involved for not going home for Christmas: we want to start our own traditions.
When you live thousands of miles from home (or shoot, even a few hours), going home for the holidays, while a blessing and so lovely to be near family, can be incredibly stressful. Plus, there’s the whole waking-up-in-a-hotel-room thing. We did that when Bunny was a year old and it was terribly depressing. So last year we decided to stay home and wake up in our own beds on Christmas morning, and we’re continuing the tradition again this year. Okay, so waking up at home isn’t really a tradition, but we’re still pretty excited about it.
Other traditions we’re doing this year? Making baked goodies together as a family and then we’ll take them to our neighbors. We’re going to let the girls stay up past their bedtime, bundle them up (or turn up the air conditioner since the high on Christmas is supposed to be 80-degrees here), and go look at all the pretty lights around town. We’re going to see the expression on our almost 3-year-old’s face when she sees all of the presents under the tree on Christmas morning, let our 10-month old play with wrapping paper, and lounge around in pajamas with a faux fire going on the TV. We’ll FaceTime with family later and open presents “together,” and wish we were there, but know in our hearts we’re doing the right thing.
In the military we move around a lot, and the girls’ father is often away for birthdays and holidays, so if we can offer some stability and normalcy, at least when he is here, then that’s something I want to give them.
Do you stay home or do you leave to visit family for the holidays? How do you balance Christmas and create traditions when it’s just your family?
pomelo / 5621 posts
We are far from family and have so far stayed home for Christmas. It has been fun to do our own traditions and enjoy the day. Next year we will take the plunge and travel so DS can be with his cousins for the holidays.
kiwi / 511 posts
I am really big on traditions and it has been hard to at time to remember what was a tradition for me isn’t necessarily tradition for my DH. I think we are finding our groove now that we have 4 Christmases under our belts as a family.
We both agreed no traveling on Christmas Day other than to church from the get go so that was nice and was a tradition of mine. My extended family did a get together Christmas Eve. We did that this year since it was the first year that I was not working (I took it as a vacation day this year, typically my DH tends to get Christmas Eve off). So we had his parents and grandmother over for lasagna which was his tradition on Christmas Eve.
Yesterday should have been a nice ham dinner with sweet potatoes and green beans and cookies. But time got away from me and I realized about 45 minutes before dinner that I had not yet started the sweet potatoes. Now I could have done them in the microwave and they would have been on time, but we were watching a movie and getting ready for a second one. So I decide I would make that today and on Christmas we had mac & cheese and chicken nuggets as a picnic watching our second movie of the day. This looks like to be the start a new traditions since the four of us had great time.