The weather played a huge part in it for all of us. I loved it when the snow came. Our whole family enjoyed the weather, then as it dragged on, it became very clear that it was causing major issues and we may not all be getting together with our extended family for the big day. The weather was just too unpredictable! Did you know that the last time we had a white Christmas was in 1938 and it was only 3 inches, we had like 12-14 inches this year!
Our tradition is that Christmas morning we open our gifts, do the Santa thing, have a scrumptous breakfast as a family and then get all ready for the day and head to my parents house, where we do more of the same. Open gifts, eat, be merry all day long. As the day approached though we were getting the idea that it may not happen. Sure enough Christmas Eve was pretty hectic. We live in Clatskanie, over a major hill, and the freezing rain and snow cleary were working against us and our desire to travel. No one was going to cross over the hill! My sis wasn't able to even pick her baby up from his daddy until later that day cause of the weather. It was enough to kind of get you down.
Christmas Eve, I woke up and was like, ok, we cannot be with family this holiday, I will make the best of it. My mom gave me a pep talk to get me going and I was ready to go shop for food, here in town. I picked up all of our meal fixings, for a Christmas day feast, turkey and all, and then also the fixings for homemade pizza and salad for that evening. As the day wore on, the weather just continued to be treacherous, it was stormy out. 2:00p.m. came and as we were all finishing Quiet time, the electricity went out. Now, here in our town, this a pretty common and typical thing to happen, it actually occurs quite often. Suprisingly it hadn't gone out the entire storm, but sure enough, it did it that day. I really had a time, when it came dinner time, cause I had major plans, hello! I needed an attitude adjustment for sure. I was sad, overwhelmed, frustrated, just not happy and joyful. It took awhile but after I got an adustment, we sat down to cold ham sandwhiches and chips, dips, and we had a great time. The evening was fun, running around with their flashlights and stuff. We decided to open a few gifts, cause, what else were we gonna do. We were all bundled up, freezing cold, hanging out with no electricity. It was fun. We decided to open our gift from our neighbors, they are so sweet! Get this, we opened it up and it was like a set of a whole bunch of candles... we needed them! Thank you God. We let Daniel open his keyboard, cause we knew it would provide lots of entertainment, and we were right. It was a fun evening! The electricity came on just before we all laid down to bed, all bundled up together, to keep warm, choosing the warmest room, which was Matthew's. It came on and it was weird, it was like, oh, we adjusted to all that and now it's all good, no problem.
I was learning. God was teaching. He knew that this outage was gonna cause lots of problems, but he allowed it the same. I hear of people who were right in the middle of cooking thier Christmas meal, turkey in oven and all. A friend was baking her daughters birthday cake, it is her birthday on Christmas Eve. Oh boy. God wants to grow us all. He wants to stretch us. He wants to teach us. It took an hour or two for me to get my attitude adjustment, believe me I was to a real point of frustration. But then I took it to the Lord. And then this joy came over me, not from me, it was HIS joy, his contentment. I didn't have it in me. I was actually ticked. But as soon as I just gave it over, he turned it into something beautiful! It was fun, it was bonding with my family and it was perfect. :)
Freezing cold!
Christmas Day was fun. We had our feast. Which I might add, was cooked entirely by myself. Now if you know how our house runs that is an unusual occurance. Steve was banned from the kitchen, I was determine to cook the entire thing by myself! It was great! I missed my other family, we haven't ever been without them on the holidays, we've always been with others, our families. But again, God is teaching us, he has a reason. We had a great time, just our family, just our boys, our first Christmas together as just us, and it was perfect!
I let him carve the turkey though! :)
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