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Love Thursday: Anyone Else But You

Dec 182008

Today FireDad and I are celebrating our anniversary. Well, to be honest, we’re not celebrating-celebrating until the 27th. We’ll be going away, without children, for a weekend of romance and love. And sleep, to be honest. But, today, the 18th, is our official anniversary. A friend is watching LittleBrother while BigBrother is at school so the two of us lovebirds can dart off for a lunch without someone fighting over who gets to lick ketchup over french fries.

The other day, while waiting for Santa to arrive on a fire truck, FireDad and I took some silly pictures. We do this a lot. I don’t know why. Perhaps because we’re silly. In fact, we’re still rather silly for one another. Through the sleepless nights, diapers, work drama, missed holidays due to work (and associated drama), postpartum depression, arguments, grumpy pants and general boringness of life… we’ve somehow found a way to stay silly with one another. Which is good as life can be far too serious sometimes. It’s good to laugh with one another.

We’ve been through a lot and, no doubt, there are things ahead that won’t be as funny as this series of pictures. But I think we both feel very blessed to be heading into each day together. We’re not perfect. But finding the humor in our mistakes has brought us thus far. Looking at the joy in our eyes, I have hope enough for the future.

Happy Anniversary, FireDad. You’ll always be my hero.

Life is Good: When You Have Too Many Family Members

Family, Holidays, Living Life 6 Responses »

Dec 122008

I frequently complain about how we have to split up the holidays. As we live two hours from my family, we can’t hit all of FireDad’s family and all of my family on single holidays. As such, we start planning ahead of time as to where we are going on each holiday. This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family. And so we will be spending the Christmas days (Eve and Day) splitting the holiday amongst FireDad’s family.

This can get hectic. And it’s hard to travel back and forth with small children at times. No kid likes to stop playing with gifts they have received from one grandparent, put on a bulky coat and go to another’s house. And I like to sleep when my belly is full, so putting on my own coat and traveling down the road isn’t my own idea of supreme fun either.

As I was grumping and grouching about this before Thanksgiving rolled around, it finally struck me how truly lucky we are in this way. In essence, I was complaing that… we have too many family members.

This seems like something absolutely silly to complain about when written out in that fashion, doesn’t it?

As you may recall, I lost my first grandparent, my grandfather, this past September. His absence was noted on Thanksgiving day as we sat at the table. And as Christmas rolls around, the grandfather who looked so much like Santa is even more deeply missed. All the same, as lucky as I have been, these two little boys are even luckier. They have: two maternal grandparents, two maternal paternal great-grandparents, one maternal maternal great-grandmother, one maternal maternal maternal great-great-grandmother, one paternal grandmother, one paternal grandfather and step-grandmother, two paternal paternal great-grandparents, and one paternal maternal great-grandmother. Then there are aunts, uncles and a long string of great-aunts and great-uncles. And cousins, 1st cousins once removed and 2nd cousins.

I mean, I still have a great-grandmother. Who is healthier than the lot of us combined, folks! We are so very blessed!

And so, this holiday, and hopefully forever in the future, I hope to be less grumbly about traipsing from house to house. I hope to put on my coat with a smile, give a warm of hug of true thanks and make my way to the next house. Someday I hope to host holidays for my great-grandchildren. Or even my great-great. We are so blessed in this way to be five generations deep on one side. To have so many people to love us, to love TheBrothers. To have a place to go to celebrate a holiday, a birthday, a summer day, anything. To be able to call anyone family. And we celebrate that blessing in our lives this year.

Life is good when you have too many family members.