Merry Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is the big night for my family. It's the day of the fancy dinner in the dining room, the church service, the looking at Christmas lights, and the opening of the presents. Tomorrow is just for Santa and playing with toys. This year things are different- we're in Chicago and JP's family is visiting us. This means that for the first time in my life I won't be opening presents on Christmas Eve. Luckily I'm grown up now and can handle waiting 12 more hours, but if you had told me this when I was little, it wouldn't have gone over very well (not to imply that I wasn't a perfectly behaved, patient child...). One good thing about this first Christmas away from my family is that it's completely different from anything we would do in Houston- tonight we're having Christmas Eve dinner at the Drake hotel on Michigan Avenue followed by service at a nearby church. Tomorrow we're opening all the presents, we don't have stockings, and we're not having breakfast tacos and tamales for brunch. I may feel like I didn't really have a Christmas, but at least I'm not sitting here comparing everything to what I'd be doing at home- there's really no comparison to make.

Landon is having a marvelous time with all the attention. Yesterday we all went to Marshall Field's on State Street (I refuse to call it Macy's) for lunch at the Walnut Room underneath the great tree. He was in his Santa suit and practically caused a traffic jam around our table. The kid is a charmer. His stack of presents underneath our 3 foot Christmas tree is larger than JP's and mine combined (thank goodness he's too young to have any idea how spoiled he's about to be) and I'm about to put him in his most handsome outfit for dinner tonight.

So things are different, but getting married, joining another family, having a baby, and starting your own family are all about changes and the ups and downs that come with them (mostly ups!). Christmas 2007 will be a unique one and as long as JP, Landon, and I are together, I don't really care what we do to officially celebrate it. Merry Christmas Eve to you all, I can't imagine my year without this blog and all the support I've received through it. I leave you with a picture of Landon in the abovementioned handsome outfit:

I can't believe that a year ago he was just a little heartbeat on an ultrasound.