Yes, yes...almost a month and half between posts....The slippery slope of blogging distractions has started. The one thing that a holiday season acts as for most people is a busy schedule! Our holidays are no exception to the hustle-bustle of family, travel, food, crafts, shopping, decorating, gift wrapping, gift re-wrapping, so on and so forth. Y'all know the routine I'm sure.
Things this year are a little different for us of course. The deployment makes everything in our lives a little less typical. This doesn't mean that our 'big events' are put on hold or that they aren't plenty of special like the would normally be. It just means it takes a little more planning and a lot of luck to come out the way we want them. Today is one such event for us.
We had our home Christmas celebration today. Every year we have multiple Christmases to attend so we planted our feet and dug in and have our small family time on Christmas Eve morning. This year instead of the three of us tearing into gifts together in pj's and then eating whatever Papa decides to make for breakfast, Alyssa and I hunkered down in front of the computer this morning and hit "Video Call" on Skype. Alyssa watched with a smile as Papa appeared on the computer and was ready to show him all sorts of things (c'mon, she isn't quite two yet...she hasn't figured out that we could commence the ripping open of gifts right then). So while they chatted a bit I set up the video camera on a shelf aiming at the bottom of the tree and then hit record. Alyssa was handed a gift and to town she went! Papa watched her open all her gifts under the tree and then she opened a couple for him too. She did try to give them to him so he could open them but unfortunately Skype doesn't quite work that way yet so we sat on Momma's lap to open Papa's stuff. (This is where that 'planning' should've come in. I should have had his gifts wrapped and mailed over so that he could open them on the other end of Skype today. I'll remember that better for the next deployment I swear!) Of course his gifts will be mailed out to him ASAP next week and there are a couple things that he didn't get to see today for his holiday surprises.
It was wonderful to share the holiday together even if it was in a way that takes a little more effort. Alyssa loved to have Papa 'here' and to show him not only her gifts but his as well. She holds things up when asked and thrusts it as close to the web cam as possible (typically resulting in a black screen due to lack of light). I read a blog today that a friend had posted a link to. It is another blog for military families and it's theme was the phrase "Next year..." A better phrase for us I have not thought of. I have avoided using the phrase up until this point in this post and it was HARD! It is almost like an anthem for many families who are temporarily apart. "Next year..." we will get to go through the holiday craziness together. "Next year..." we will get to curl up for classic holiday movies at night. "Next year..." we will get to remember that this year was wonderful even with a deployment overlaying it. <3
Happy Holidays to all of you.
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