Merry Christmas

There are two versions of Christmas this year. Version one (planned months ago right after Wyatt was born, while Mom & Dad were still in Okinawa): I'll come home with my baby, we'll hang out with the family, Wyatt and Thomas will meet each other for the first time and have great fun playing together. Jeff will join us so we can also spend lots of quality time with his family, we'll celebrate Christmas Eve together - the whole lot of us - by going to church and then enjoying our first family dinner in Mom & Dad's new house, finishing with Wyatt's half birthday cake for dessert (that's right, today's his half birthday!).

Version two, our reality: Wyatt and I arrive home to find out Thomas has had a stomach bug. He seems better but it turns out he isn't so we have to keep the babies apart, which means I get no time with my sister. And then Mom gets the stomach bug. And then Jeff arrives, and his mom, in time for the baptism (which was great) but then his mom gets the stomach bug. And then Jeff, Dad and I get the stomach bug. And now Wyatt has it. So our storybook Christmas isn't so storybook after all. I've been here for almost 4 weeks and I think I've actually had about 20 minutes of quality time with my sister, probably 10 minutes with her husband and about 5 minutes with each of her kids. And I've held Thomas for all of 2 minutes, max. I think she's only held Wyatt once for about 2 minutes. This is not what we imagined.

Our traditional Christmas Eve was not to be; in fact, we didn't share our post-church dinner in hopes of somehow making Andrew and my 86-year-old grandma the only family members not to get sick. Mind you this is all going down in Mom & Dad's rental townhouse because the new house is thisclose to being finished, but they don't close until the day we leave. My aunt, uncle and cousin aren't here because honestly, who wants to enter this germ pit? This is not what dreams are made of. And trust me, there have been more than a few tears shed over this turn of events.

But here it is, Christmas Eve (almost Christmas because we've stayed up so late chatting) and I realize that there is simply too much good for me to be sad. I am grateful for my husband's kind heart, the fact that he stayed home with our sick baby so the rest of us could go to church tonight AND fixed dinner while we were gone. Quite frankly, as they read the list of church members who'd passed away in the last year, I was flat-out grateful that my husband's name wasn't on that list because we kind of had a close call last January.

As I was sitting in church, lamenting that Wyatt wasn't there wearing his special Christmas sweater gifted from my aunt and uncle, I realized that I am fortunate to have a happy, healthy (for the most part) baby boy. I am lucky to have sat close enough to my 3-year-old nephew to hear him announce, in his loud stage whisper, during the prayer that he has to go potty. And I am glad I got to see his beaming face tell me it's only ONE MORE SLEEP until Santa comes!

I am thankful that Jeff's parents are willing to forego their own traditions to spend time here with us; I am thankful that my parents are willing to share their home with Jeff's parents and I am super-thankful that our parents get along well enough that we're all actually (seemingly, anyway) enjoying it.

It's no small miracle that we're all here, together, to share Christmas even if it isn't quite the fairytale we imagined (I mean, Jeff's dad had to drive from Denver yesterday, for goodness' sake!) We have a loving family, we have food to eat, we have an abundance of gifts under the tree, we have much too much for which to be grateful. So while it's not the way we pictured it, planned it or hoped for it to be, it is still Christmas. And despite what I first believed, it really is a Merry Christmas! Hope yours is, too :)