Christmas Eve – 12/24

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care… but what do you know, Santa has already been there! (Santa came during the day today and filled our stockings – how out of the norm!) We aren’t following all our Christmas traditions this year, and it’s feeling a little strange. I’m not playing with the brass at the Christmas Eve service tonight. AND we’re going to open our presents tonight! The tradition, when the girls were home, was for them to get to open one present on Christmas Eve and it was usually pajamas. Then on Christmas morning we would open stockings, eat traditional breakfast, clean up from breakfast, get dressed, and THEN open presents. But since the “girls” aren’t here, and we’ll have a bit of a time crunch tomorrow morning, we decided to open present tonight, after our traditional homemade pizza supper (at least that’s staying the same). I told Kevin it was a slippery slope that we started down, once the girls left for college and we started watching TV while eating supper. Now it’s come to this!

Tomorrow morning, after we open our stockings and eat our traditional Swedish Egg Cake, Kevin will drive me to Ellensburg to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law. They are driving from Ritzville to the west side tomorrow and they are giving me a ride to Mom and Dad’s (see you tomorrow Mom and Dad!). I’ll spend the week with them. Suzanne lives nearby in Tacoma so I will get to see her, and Teresa is flying down from Alaska on Thursday, so I’ll get to see her too! I expect that I will get to meet my new great niece while there – HOORAY! Kevin will keep the home fires burning here in Yakima. Our dogs are not good house guests, so it’s better that they stay home with him.

So this doesn’t have much to do with cancer – but it does. I am still a normal mom, wife, human. I might be switching things up a little bit, but I cherish traditions (old and new), and I’m still going to do the stuff that has meaning for me. And sometimes that helps me forget that I’m in the middle of chemo. Sometimes I can be just regular ol’ me… and that’s nice.

Addendum: Now that we’ve opened presents – Kevin got me several awesome pairs of earrings from my favorite jewelry designer and friend from Boise, Lisa’s Creations ( https://lisas-creations-jewelry.myshopify.com/ ), and I got him a fabulous Nordic baking cookbook – And Now that the mail has arrived, with presents of 3 beautiful hand-knit hats, and pecans, from my sister in Texas, and Now that we’ve eaten our Christmas Eve pizza…. I’ll add some pictures!
Happy Christmas to all of you!

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