runlikejoy

Displaced Stay At Home Californian in rural N. Carolina

The Many Faces of Joy

The Many Faces of Joy

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Tradition



Christmas Traditions are fun!  One of my all time favorite things to do sometime after Thanksgiving is to wait until I hear that awesome Bing Crosby Hawaiian Christmas Song on the radio, call up my Hawaiian friend Cheryl and sing it to her at the top of my lungs.  I also make truffles at least 3 times during December.  And I like to have all my Christmas shopping done by December 1st so that I can sit back and watch the mayhem and feel good about being done.

Tonight I started opening boxes and sorting and wrapping.  As I was digging in the boxes from Amazon and the bags of things I had stashed through the last couple of weeks I found a huge box at the bottom and opened it.  It was a ton of amazing Japanese goodies from Daiso which my Cupertino friend Elisa had sent me back in October or November.  It was like winning the Japanese Dollar Store lottery only now we have to find stockings big enough to cram it all into!

Because we bought a house a month ago and moved a month ago I was really behind the ball on Christmas this year only just finishing all my shopping last Friday while the girls finished their last 3 hours at school for the year.  Tonight I ran out of tape and had to strap the last gifts with ribbon and then I ran out of wrapping paper. 

I don't know how much planning you put into your holiday but I can tell you that each year that goes by I am amazed by my Mom.  For a single parent to pull off a holiday like Christmas the way she did had to require super human talent and brains.  I remember Christmas being so wonderful and full of tradition and exciting and fun.  And I remember each gift being so perfect and well thought out and our stockings stuffed full of candy and goodies and an orange in the toe.

Thanks Mom (and Grandma) for making Christmas so great and for creating all the traditions that I now carry down to my kids.  I've added some of my own, like the fact that my kids know all the words to Last Christmas by Wham!, watching a new Christmas movie each year, this year it was Home Alone 2, visiting Santa and telling him how good we were, reading Twas the Night Before Christmas, putting cookies out for Gabe, er, Santa to eat later, Santa letters from Papa, going ice skating, drinking Coca Cola and many many more.   This year it is just the 4 of us but we are gonna be alright and have a grand time. 

Mele Kalikimaka!



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