Tis' the season!

Ho ho ho! The season is finally here! Well it seems that I have been seriously neglecting my blog. So sitting here, looking at the tree, the freshly wrapped presents underneath it and the snow gently falling outside my window, I decided to pluck out a few lines. So I have a nice big cup of coffee, the dogs have been fed and walked, the husband is still in bed and I actually have 5 minutes all to myself with no interruptions. Imagine that!

I love this season. Christmas always has and always will be my favorite time of the year regardless of all the pains I have gone through during November and December. But the upcoming new year always gives me fond memories to think of. The newly fallen snow on the ground that squeaks and crunches under your foot the first time you step out on it always makes me smile. The colorful lights, flashy tinsel, ornaments and music of the season takes me back to when I was a young child and all the magic of Christmas was so real to me. I guess that feeling just never left me. I have my parents to thank for that.

My parents always made Christmas special for me growing up. It didn't matter if it was a good year and they made a lot of money or if it was a harder year with less to show for it. My mother always baked throughout the season. Lots of cookies and treats. Some I loved like Russian tea cakes, sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies and those magic cookie bars I could always count on being in the kitchen. Some I didn't care for much too, I'm sorry mom but I still don't like fruitcake cookies :) My father always loved them. I suppose they weren't too bad, but just not my cookie lol There were always brightly wrapped gifts under the tree. Even if mom and dad didn't make a lot that year, they would go without so I would have a good Christmas. In our family, Christmas meant love. It meant being together with your family.

Talking about Christmas makes me remember ones of the past. I once came across a tape recording my parents had made of me shortly before Christmas. I must have been about 3 or 4 years old. They asked me, what did I want Santa to bring me for Christmas. I was fairly adamant about what I wanted. They asked me again and I gave them the same answer. I'm not sure if I got it that Christmas, but what was it I wanted? What could it have been that I wanted so much I was going to ask Santa for it? A banana. Yes, you see correctly, I wanted Santa to bring me a banana for Christmas. lol I wonder if they remember that. I wonder what I did with that tape. Most likely was lost somewhere along the way of moving. I remember the Christmas I got my little kitchen set. My mom had saved all those little single serving boxes of cereal, empty boxes of mac n cheese and other containers to stock it with. I had that kitchen set for many years. It was olive green like most kitchen appliances back in the early 70's. I also got a bright yellow bean bag that year that I loved falling asleep in. I have a picture my parents took of me asleep in it covered with my Ragedy Ann and Andy sleeping bag, another gift from another Christmas of past.

I remember the very first music box I ever had. I got that Christmas of 1978 and I still have it. I also got a night gown that year, full length to the floor, it had a white top with a long very ruffled red attached dress that went to the floor. I remember taking that with me to camp the following year and it fell into the water of the showers one morning and the red bled onto the white. I cried for a couple of hours I was so upset over that. Luckily my mother is a whiz at fixing all types of hurt and was able to get the white nice and bright again.

I remember one Christmas that I know my mom will remember. Cabbage patch dolls were all the rage that year. I was about 13 and I wanted one so badly. They were pretty expensive and we couldn't have afforded it. My mom found a pattern to make them and went to work. On Christmas morning I had a cabbage patch doll who I named Amanda. My mom asked me, when you have a baby, whats the first thing you do? I was sort of dumbfounded. I asked, check whether its a girl or a boy? My mom asked, what else do you do? I said, I have no idea. She giggled and said you check its fingers and toes. I was like alright and I looked at them. Fingers and toes there! She starts laughing now, and tells me to count them. My mom in her rush to finish the doll for Christmas had inadvertently given Amanda 6 toes on each foot. LOL She told me she would fix it when things calmed down after Christmas but I told her I wanted them left alone. It was something that my mom made with love for me and I wanted it just the way it was. I still have Amanda and all 12 toes *smile*.

I could go and on about Christmas while growing up. I can count on one hand how many times I have been away from my parents on Christmas. This year we can't be together. I'm glad that my parents gave me my Christmas spirit. If it hadn't been for them, well who knows, maybe I'd be bah humbug. I miss them very much, they live too far away to get together this year. I cry when I think of us not being together but then I have to smile when I look around my house. Although we aren't together, my parents are both here, all around my home. They're in everything around me. Makes me feel just a little bit better.

So I thank my parents. They gave me gifts of love, gifts of happiness, gifts of Christmas spirit and the most important gift of all, the gift of life. I love you mom and dad. Always have, always will, no matter where life takes us.

Long day today!

We drove down to the middle of Michigan for my husbands grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. Spent most of the day down there, it was so crowded!

I got to thinking about 60 yrs of being married. The average marriage these days lasts about 3-5 yrs and then people throw in the towel. It got me wondering about whether it was real love, soul mates or was it just that people from their day and age just didn't get divorced? People get divorced for many different reasons of course, but Ive never met anyone who was married for that long. My parents have been married for 48 yrs and my dad was married before he met my mother. Theirs was the longest I had known until I got married. I think it's incredible to spend that many years with someone.

For me, I know I found my soul mate, although I would love to lock him in a closet on occasion and forget he's there lol But all in all he's been a great husband. Loving, caring, supportive, all the things a good husband is supposed to be. I was married twice before I met my husband. Long story short, husband #1, married too young, he was abusive, I made it out alive. Husband #2 thought I was trying to not have children when I actually had cancer and didn't know it, he left me for a stripper who turned out to be a drug addict and now she has the kid and he pays for her drugs (child support). This is my husbands second marriage. He was unhappily married for 10 yrs and decided in the end that having children was not a good enough reason to stay in misery and they divorced. Age was a factor for them, he was 17 and she 18 when they got married.

It just seems that people give up on marriage so easily. Sometimes there are other circumstances that prove you should get divorced, everyone has a reason, but Ive seen friends give up after just a couple of years. For superficial reasons at that. Had they stuck it out, they could have become a perfectly happy couple together for the rest of their lives, who knows? They sure wont, they gave up.

So in the end I'm left with a question to ponder over. What factor is it that makes a marriage work out and last a lifetime? I may never know the answer to that. I don't know that anyone really has the answer.