I'm sitting here at my desk being terribly impressed by the fact that my feet are dry.  Why is that, you ask?  Well, because we are being inundated with torrential rains and high winds.  My pants are wet and my coat and mittens are wet but my toes remain dry.  This is thanks to the wool socks I am wearing and my danskos which have 2 inch thick soles to keep my feet out of the puddles.  In about 20 minutes I am walking down the block to eat breakfast compliments of Pennsylvania Hospital.  They give all their employees a meal at the holidays.  I usually go to breakfast since that's my favorite meal of the day.

I know that there are lots of ways to feel about the upcoming holidays.  I seem to read a lot of posts in which people are bemoaning that we have holidays. I understand this.  This has been a tough year for me.  I lost a cousin, an uncle and my mother.  My daughter had a major surgery.  It feels like there was very little quiet time for a while there.  I am looking forward to this holiday as a way to celebrate that we made it through the stress and are still in one piece. 

We have traditions (which seem to revolve around food) that are comforting.  I didn't grow up with these. Pk and I made them ourselves.  Some became traditions because the kids decided they liked them and some because they just made us happy.  Decorating the tree on Christmas Eve started out as a way to extend the surprise and the Wow factor.  It was so very cool to see the girls' faces when they first saw the tree with the presents under it.  When they went to bed, the tree was bare.  When they woke up, it was lit up and shiny.  It's a memory of late nights trying to be quiet as we wrestled with lights and ornaments as they slept on.  When they got older, they joined in the fun and now it's a family activity that no one misses.  I know that when they have children, this will change but for now, I'm enjoying it.

And our Christmas book.  1981 was our first Christmas together.  We bought a book and started recording our holidays.  It's filled with funny rememberances and special guests and presents and fun times.  There are blurbs about what was happening in the world and in our family.  The time the car died on the 24th, and the year we ALL had the flu, and the year each girl was born and the year......You get the picture.  It's the thing we all look for as the decorations come out (it gets put away with the christmas stuff).  Someone reads parts of it aloud and we laugh at ourselves.  We are a strange lot.  Pk and i bought one for Em when she moved out and now it's time to get one for Kate.  It's important to remember these things.  They can bring such joy (and in my case sentimental tears).

Is there something that you cannot do without during the holidays?