Wednesday, December 26, 2007

i wanna look good if i get to look god in the eye

[i'm pretty sure bailee is the only one who has a chance to get this one without cheating...sorry]

it's been really interesting to look at how we grow out of traditions as as we get older. i was thinking about this yesterday morning as i waited to go downstairs and start the christmas festivities. my family is huge on tradition- anyone who is even remotely close to us knows all about this. we become even more tradition oriented when the holidays roll around, but this year, there seem to have been some changes. more than normal. things get more casual as i get older and in a way, it makes all of the anticipation of christmas morning smaller. this year, my parents let jeff and i be downstairs on christmas eve instead of making us stay upstairs all night without looking downstairs until they let us come down on christmas morning. (granted, we were doing dishes, so it wasn't a great privilege to be downstairs...but different all the same) having to stay in the family room or my room watching movies or playing games is one of the things that defines christmas eve in my mind and it was very odd to not HAVE to do that.
as i said before, we have to stay upstairs until my parents tell us we're allowed to come down on christmas morning, but this year that changed too. my parents told us we could come down whenever we wanted to because jon and jo were going to be a little while longer and they didn't want to make us stay upstairs with nothing to do. so jeff and i decided to leave and get some coffee before we did any of the christmas morning stuff. it was just odd to be able to come down and see the tree and presents before we were going to sit down together and open them.
i guess the upstairs/downstairs boundary played a major part in the christmas morning excitement for me as i grew up and now it's not as big of a deal and it feels weird.

also, we didn't do our normal tradition of meeting with the other side of the family today. what usually happens is we'll meet with one side of the fam on christmas day and then the other on the day after...this year we don't meet with the other side until sunday.
another christmas day tradition- we have always opened presents on christmas morning and stockings on christmas night after we visit relatives. yesterday we did both presents and stockings in the morning so that jon and jo could be here for both. then when we got home from my grandparents, we didn't have anything to do.
it just felt different and weird...not necessarily bad, just weird. this christmas just hasn't felt normal to me. it came and went very quickly and i didn't feel the normal amounts of anticipation as i usually do.
all of that being said- it was also one of the most fun christmases i've had in a long time. we had lots of sibling time which really doesn't happen very often and it was great :)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

that song doesn't exist!!!!
unless it's closest match iz a 'say anything' song...and i don't really think that bailey listens much to that hellish band.

thoughts of an elbow said...

looks like i've stumped the cheaters?

bailee.b said...

woowee! i own this!
it's our pal Eric Hutchinson..."Oh!"

even reading that line makes me wanna get up and DANCE!!

thanks for the easy points Lauree :)

Molly said...

our christmas was like that too, lots of 'broken' traditions. Yeah, weird, But still really good!

Sara Hansen said...

I totally know how you feel with this one. I posted a little bit about it in my blog, but most of what I was feeling I couldnt really talk about. It was a bummer to have nothing be the same.

becky said...

yeah...i know how you feel...at least you got more time with jeff and john than usual!

Marianne said...

geez, did anyone have a "normal" christmas???
i hate change.