Kind of Like Old Times....

Christmas has really been a difficult time for me the last few years. With my older two kids grown and gone (in some cases gone as in out of the country gone) it was difficult for me to maintain the traditional holiday
feel around the house. Everything seemed out of sync. Don't get me wrong, I am tickled pink that my children are thriving in their adult years. I'm happy to see them fulfilling their dreams and going on adventures I would have never even dreamed.
I'm not one who usually struggles with change, but I am not ashamed to admit that I have struggled with the nearly empty nest syndrome. Last Christmas I pretty much
stayed in a fetal position.
I was starring

the one year anniversary of my fall in the face and had enough residual side effects that I was in complete panic mode about facing New Year's as a different person (I'm still not real crazy about the
new me). The year before that we just packed up the the boys and literally ran away from home. We ran to the mountains of Colorado along with our best friends and their families and enjoyed probably the best Christmas ever just pretending the rest of the world didn't exist. This year my daughter was back in the plains of Oklahoma, my son had finally decided that maybe God didn't call him to a life of singleness, so his beautiful girlfriend joined us and for the first Christmas in a long time we were all together. The last few holidays we served at the homeless shelter but this year we had a family dinner with my brother and his wife and my parents. It was nice to have everyone together under the same roof for a change.... Kind of like old times.