La Vida Loca De Flores

So our first Christmas Season back home in Wyoming has been an experience filled with many mixed feelings of joy and excitement laced with a bit disappointment and a feeling of loss, and that nagging feeling that something was just missing. It has actually taken me a long time (obviously) to sort my feelings out and write this post because I am so happy to be back home, yet at the same time I really miss all of my California friends and I have so many wonderful memories from the past 9 years of living there. I suppose the Holiday Season and the end of this year and beginning a new one have made me think (and feel...which I sometimes try not to do too much!) about those years, which were not ALL bad!

The last few weeks we spent in OUR home back in the desert was at Christmastime. We had such a magical, dare I say almost perfect Christmas last year, spent in the home I had decorated with my favorite things and colors, surrounded by familiar sights, smells, friends, and family, not to mention that my mom spent the holidays with us for the first time and we topped it off with a family trip to Disneyland. It's pretty hard to compete with an experience like that, and like Mom says, "It is the Christmas that all Christmases will be measured against...until a better one comes along!" Being back home, I was really hoping for white Christmas, but this year the "white" came in early October! There was a bit of snow by the time Christmas came and I was happy with that, along with the nice crisp, cold air and the woodsy smell of wood burning stoves floating on the breeze.

When we left California for Wyoming in June, the original plan was to be in a home of our own by the time school started...wow that was wishful thinking! We are still here at Mike's Mom's house, which in an of itself is not a bad thing. The kids have loved being with Grandma and we were blessed to be in her home at a time when she needed us most. I did, however, underestimate the comfort in being surrounded by our own familiar Christmas decorations, ornaments, and traditions that we as a family had gathered and developed over the years.

I really missed all the kids' homemade ornaments that fill our tree with the love they put into them, not to mention that we are "real tree" people. We had made plans to go up to the mountain to cut our own Christmas tree, which we were really excited about, but schedules and mechanical issues kept getting in the way. We held out for the real tree until about 10 days or so before Christmas and then we finally we pulled out Grandma's artificial tree and put it up.

Jett and Blaze worked hard sorting the various lengths of branches and inserting them in the appropriate holes, while Kolt looked on with a confused look on his face. We got Grandma's decorations and lights out and decorated the tree and "Christmas" felt a little closer...until Kolt asked "When are we going to get the 'regular' tree?" I told him next year and he sighed and had no further interest in decorating the "not regular" tree!

Sierra decided to "decorate" herself with a couple of beautiful gold Christmas ornaments from the tree!

We were also, once again, blessed by the love and generousity of others this holiday season. On one VERY cold (way below zero), with the wind howling (making the wind chill way way below zero) night, the doorbell rang. We all looked at each other wondering who on earth would be out and about on a night like this! We opened the door to find no one, but a huge bag of gifts sitting on the porch! The gifts represented the 12 Days of Christmas and there was a package with a note for each day! The kids were so excited and we had so much fun opening a package every day until Christmas. There were things like gloves, mugs and hot cocoa, candy canes, and (my favorite) a box of chocolates, each with a special holiday message attached! It was such a blessing to feel so welcome and loved by our new ward family!

We faithfully kept alive our tradition of new PJ's on Christmas Eve. Kolt and Jett were happy to pose in their new PJ's, however, Sierra and Blaze have apparently become "too mature" to put on their new jammies and pose for a picture!

Christmas morning was, as always, a wonderful time. The stockings were stuffed and Santa apparently deemed my children to have been "good" this year and stopped in with some pretty popular gifts! Here is Blaze checking out his new "Red Ryder" BB gun. Unfortunately, it does not have a "compass in the stock" or a "thing that tells time," but he loved it anyway and was outside shooting targets by noon!

Kolt got some more of his favorite mini cars both from Santa and from Blaze, which he loves to line up and sort...either by color, type, or "who wants to be friends!" He is so cute!

Sierra...she is definitely taking lessons from her mother...conveniently ducked out of all of the Christmas morning pictures due to lack of makeup and not having showered....wow I think we have the same brain!

Jett has got to be my favorite kid on Christmas morning! Every feeling he has just radiates from his entire being! He is so excited to receive a gift whatever it may be, but especially if it is one he has been asking for...but he is just as happy to watch others open the gifts he has given and share in that joy....the look on his sweet face just says it all!

As it turned out, it was a blessed Holiday, perfect or not, sharing the love and joy of these little ones...and the not-so-little ones too, being around family, and feeling incredibly blessed by the gifts and spirit of the Season!