A Different Kind of Christmas

Last night marked the first of our Christmas celebrations for 2019. We had "Christmas at the Cabin," as we've come to call it. This was the Christmas we always shared with Ryan's mom, step-dad, brother, and two sisters. Last year, we actually hosted it at our house, because Ryan's mom was in the rehab hospital, and it was so much closer for her to get a pass to come to our house rather than commute all the way to the cabin. So it had been two full years since we celebrated at the cabin, and we knew this was going to be a very different kind of celebration.

Yesterday was also Ryan's mom's birthday, and she would have been 65 years old. To have her birthday and the family Christmas fall on the same day was sort of a sweet blessing as well as a doubly hard moment. 

Though our celebration takes place in the afternoon/evening, we always have breakfast food: pancakes, smoky links, eggs, breakfast casseroles, cinnamon rolls, and all kinds of extra snacks on the side. 

I have to tell you that I was so proud of Allen for working hard to make sure the cabin was decorated and ready for Christmas. Inside and out, he had worked to hang the decorations. Nita had always been the decorator, and last year a friend of theirs came in to put up all the Christmas décor (as a gift to them) but he definitely stepped up and made it beautiful out there!

We had all the traditional foods, and Ryan even made the eggs!

Dinner was delicious!

The kids were soooooo excited to open presents and spent quite a bit of time locating all gifts bearing their names (and speculating on the contents).

Three of the grandkids read portions of Luke 2, and then we said the Lord's Prayer together and dove into the gifts. 

I won't bore you with all the present pictures, because you surely have a million of your own to peruse, but this one cracked me up. Can you tell we have a new baby in the family? 

Yeah, I got to rock him to sleep. That broke my heart.

I did want to show you one of the gifts Allen got all the grandkids. (I'd seen something similar on Etsy before, and I thought it was sweet that he did this.) Those of you who have been reading here for a long time may remember that even before Nita was diagnosed with the glioblastoma, she struggled pretty significantly with other health issues. She was a severe asthmatic and had a few other issues too, so there were periods of time when she would be home-bound for a span of time, trying to get or stay well. Whenever she was home, she was in a flannel nightgown. She LOVED those gowns and had dozens of them. 

So Allen and Bre gathered up some of her favorites and had them made into pillows for all the grandkids. Allen brought them out in a huge Santa sack and let each one choose a pillow to keep. 

After all the presents had been opened, he brought out a tub of shirts and jackets that Nita had worn most frequently toward the end of her life. He invited the grown kids to choose something (if they wanted) to have a pillow made. 

As soon as we saw this one, we knew it was the one for Ryan:

We remember her wearing this shirt often - and drinking coffee together was one of their favorite things, so it was the perfect match. 

So that was our different-kind-of-Christmas yesterday. It was hard, but beautiful in its own way. Ryan and I honored Nita's memory in our own ways - paying tribute to her and appreciating all the years we did get to celebrate with her!