This year the Holidays were a little bit hard for me. It's the first time that we've been away from either of our families for Christmas, and stacked on top of that Lance has had to make up all the on-call days he missed while interviewing this month. He has been gone to the hospital all day (and night) and on all his "days off" including Christmas for almost two weeks now. This is already after he spent two weeks in a row gone interviewing. Yuck. So needless to say with the combination of these events I was feeling a little bit sad this Christmas. I know I have a lot to be grateful for, and really we had fully expected this to happen, but I guess I just wasn't prepared for how lonely it would make me feel! So it was such a happy day for all of us when we had almost one full 24 hour period without hearing the pager go off--Christmas Eve! It was a serious blessing.
We didn't really know what to do with ourselves with a whole day together! We wanted to get out of the house, but it was too cold to do anything outside, and almost everywhere was closed. We went to redeem our See's Gift Certificate, and then started coming up with some ideas. Out of chance we stumbled upon this little Miniature Golf place, and I apologize in advance for the harshness of the colors on the eyes, haha. Despite the "bright" decor, the golf place was a great deal, and the kids loved it! It ended up being very fun--we haven't been mini golfing for years and we had never taken the kids.
There were definitely some awkward golf club holds and lots of "sweeping" motions to get the ball in the hole. Much to Lance's chagrin, Evelyn actually scored really well with her weird stances despite his attempts to teach her the right way to do it.
Addi the "sweeper"
Yeah, this one didn't work with sweeping.
More of the decor. You had to putt the ball underneath the "Putt" sign. It took Addi like five minutes to figure out how to fit her body around the sign while sweeping the ball.
Blake, meanwhile was running like crazy to all the "balls" throughout the course. There were sort of glued bowling balls and bowling pins stuck everywhere as obstacles, and he couldn't get enough of them.
Lance and I took turns herding him
We went home to our cooked Christmas Roast, talked about the real meaning of Christmas, opened our pajamas and when it got dark we went on a Christmas lights drive with pjs and blankets. I think this is one tradition that we love! (One we started doing last year). It was wonderful driving around on the still Christmas Eve night seeing the beautiful lights, listening to Christmas music, and seeing families gathered together inside front windows. We arrived home with sleeping kids to the missionaries caroling door-to-door in our apartment complex. We gave them a few of Santa's cookies to share. Their singing truly set the mood for Christmas and was perfect as the kids slept upstairs and Lance and I prepared for Christmas morning.
Oh and in case I sound like I'm complaining, we really love this place. Really.
2 comments:
Melissa, thank you for your honest post. To tell you the truth, it actually brings me comfort to hear your story because I know that there will be many holidays in our future that will be like this one. I often think to myself, "If Melissa can do this with three kids, surely I can do it with two!" Thanks for being such a great example!! Here's to a calmer 2012 ;)
it was hard wasn't it? it's just different being so far from home. btw, we need to get together again soon!!! we could come to you...if you ever have a free weekend :)
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