Christmas and Making Memories

This past Christmas, for the first time ever, we spent it away from home. I loved being on the beach and in warm weather, but it was strange. I was thrown off. Did we bake cookies and leave them out for Santa? Nope. Did we have a Christmas tree to open gifts by Christmas morning? Nope. It was odd, but truth be told I loved it. The two of us were up at 6:30am Christmas morning walking the beach and searching for shells. It was the most relaxing thing in the world despite the very cold sand in between my toes. From searching for shells on the beach, to playing in the sand for hours, swimming in the indoor pool, and a Spider-Man movie to end the day......it was perfect. I loved everything about that day.

Christmas is a hard holiday for me and has been for years. I love the Christmas holiday season - the lights, the music, the fun things happening around the area - but when it comes to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day........I dread them. Those days are lonely and depressing. I have the best memories from my childhood of those days being filled with family events. Now the days are filled with emptiness and I feel I am doing a disservice to my son by not giving him great memories like I have. Truth be told if you asked him about Christmas he would likely say he loves it and everything about it and I love that about him. He's my favorite everything.

While we aren't making family centered Christmas memories we are making memories and we are making memories throughout the year. I do feel blessed to be able to give him that. Growing up we didn't travel anywhere, never went to an amusement park, water park, nothing of the sorts except for that one camping trip that I can recall. I am blessed to be able to do adventures with my boy, even if they are to the same water park EVERY SINGLE SUMMER because he loves it that much. We had a pretty great 2018 of making memories. We traveled to Ohio to visit friends over spring break, went to a Cubs game in Chicago, went to his favorite water park in Indiana, I surprised him with a trip to Chicago to see Justin Timberlake in concert, and we traveled to Florida for Christmas. It was a busy year but an awesome one!

Memories last a lifetime, good and bad ones. My goal is to make the list of good ones a lot longer and more memorable.