Christmas Trees and Stockings

It's funny that I hate winter so much, really.  December and Christmas have always been my favorite times of the year, so I suppose it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Oh well.

There are just so many things about December that I will always hold dear to my heart.  I love Christmas lights, decorations, the smell of Christmas trees (or the yankee candle I put in my home to pretend we have a real tree!), just everything about the season.  There are definitely certain decorations that I can't wait to put up the day after Thanksgiving.  Through the years, Adam has always had to contain my excitement, making sure I didn't start before Thanksgiving to start putting up all the decor.

But this year is different.  It all just seems so wrong, and yet it wouldn't be right not to put things up.  So we did (or at least a small portion of it all).  My dad strung Christmas lights outside our house and helped put up our VERY OLD Christmas tree that Adam and I got for our 2nd Christmas together and have used every year since.  This was the last year we had planned on using this Christmas tree, it's the kind where you have to poke in each individual branch into a fake tree trunk, and THEN string lights?  Very time consuming....technology in Christmas tree making design has significantly improved since the year 2000 I'd have to say!  Maybe we'll ditch this tree just because it was on the "to-do" list anyway.  Ugh.  I digress...

So my dad put up this tree, the same tree that I have put up (by myself) nearly every year of our marriage.  I've been the one (with the exception of maybe last year when Adam pitied pregnant me) to string the lights, and then gather us all for our tradition of decorating the tree.  Adam hated doing this.  Not sure why.  I think he admitted this only last year though.  I didn't (and still don't) get it, what's not to like about hanging ornaments and listening to Christmas music, followed by Christmas cookies and eggnog?  Hmm.  Maybe that was the problem.  He hated eggnog.  And I love the stuff, with a little added milk to make it a bit less thick and with some freshly grated nutmeg on top.  Yum.

This year, we put less than 1/4 of our ornaments on the tree.  I couldn't bear to put everything on.  So we put only the musts (my yearly favorites):  the crocheted snowflakes that Mom Porter gave us when we got married, along with the ornament she crosstitched for our 1st Christmas (kissing mice that has our names and 1999 on it), her beautiful handmade bread dough ornaments that are just gorgeous, and a few other handmade ones from the boys through the years.  I decided against any of the breakable (even though they make shatterproof ones now I hear...) ball ornaments--Adam hated those, even though I always put them up--or some of the other un-favorites.  It just seemed to make sense I suppose.

And I put up our beautiful handmade crosstitched stockings that Mom Porter made us.  I asked Justin what he wanted to do about having Adam's stocking up or not; he said, "I think we should put it up."  So I said sure (I just love it to pieces anyway....I kind of wanted it up!!).  And then Justin gave me a smirky Adam comment:  "That means if his stocking is up then we can share all the extra candy that Santa will leave him!"  Haha.  He's so much like his daddy.  I wonder if he'll gain Adam's sarcasm someday.  It'll be a rough house for me if that's the case.

We went to our ward Christmas party tonight.  It was nice.  It made me think back to last year's party when I was helping with the food preparation, had 2 kids (well, 3--one in my belly) in tow, and was by myself...Adam was working as usual.  It's weird how I learned to do so much on my own without him around, in a really bizarre twist of things, I definitely think the Lord prepared me in some ways of realizing how I am capable of tackling the kids and things without Adam.  I don't like it one bit and never have.  But I guess I got used to depending on other people at functions like church dinners and such, because it's just always been near impossible to do things alone.  I'm truly grateful for so many surrogate parents--"people who stand in the place of parents," as the general authority put it a few weeks ago in stake conference--that help my little family.  I like to be independent and NOT have to depend on others, but this has been a humbling experience...I'll always have to depend on others and my little boys will always have to have "lots of dads" stand in the place of their daddy.  How grateful I am for the church.  Knowing that I have such a strong support system no matter where in the world I go--it gives me MUCH peace.