The BEST Time of the Year

It's here.  The Christmas season is OFFICIALLY here.  Thanksgiving is over, and my oh my it came late this year!  It is my firm belief that one should wait until AFTER Thanksgiving to put up Christmas decorations.  (Well, if you live in the US that is.  If I was one of my UK friends, you can bet your sweet  bippy that our halls would've been decked long ago...like mid-November.)  There is a small problem with my steadfast rule in our house this year, though...a VERY small problem.

That "problem" is BABY.  As in newborn baby.  As in coming this Friday (hopefully, God willing, she can wait that long).  As in, when will we put up our tree(s)!?!

Over the last couple of days as I've seen more and more friends post pictures of their halls decked to the nines on Facebook, I've become jealous of their sparkling trees in their houses.  I'm also scared of the fact that for the first time in a long time I have no idea when we'll be putting up the tinsel and holly.  I love the pictures, but it's made me a little sad, though...until I kicked myself in the rear and got myself back on track.

Our end of November/beginning of December is PACKED: my birthday, our anniversary, #2's birthday, and welcoming new baby are all taking place within a couple of weeks of each other.  It's CRAY-CRAY!..But, I wouldn't have it any other way.  I'm going to have to learn to live with this craziness, and I can't wait to continue to learn to be more patient about putting up Christmas decorations as the years go by.  Celebrating our babies' lives will ALWAYS come first, and the decorations will have to come second...as it should be.

Happy Holidays to all and happy Baby Time to us!

P.S.  I had to choose this picture for this post, because Mr. Lincoln's pained expression is a perfect representation of  how I feel.  Yay!  It's Christmas!  Crap!  I don't know when the halls will be decked! Aw, just get over it!

11/22/63

I write this to you on the 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination.  I was not there that day.  I was not even a twinkle in my parents' eyes: one was 11, and one was 15.  I can't imagine what that day must have been like: the isolation, fear, and sense of safety completely stripped away from an entire country with the sound of a couple of gunshots ringing through the Dallas air.  

I haven't been back to this ole blog in quite some time...so many things have come up, as they often do in life.  Continuing on the journey to motherhood for a third time, going back to school full time, completing a library assistantship, soaking up the absolute joy of hearing my first two laugh and play together, while still trying to be a good wife and housekeeper have kept me busy.  OH SO BUSY!  It's been a struggle to keep up with life throughout this semester of school, but today has made me stop and breathe and try to figure out our history of as a nation since that day 50 years ago when JFK was killed.

I don't have any answers.  I haven't figured anything out.

I do know this, though.  Even though this event took place 16 years before I was born, I was affected by it.  I grew up knowing what it was almost instinctively.  When I grew up, it was still a part of the national consciousness, so much so that it's one of those events that I have always "just known about."  I grew up secretly seeking out information about JFK, the Kennedys, and what happened that day.  I grew up looking at pictures of John, Jr: him jogging in NYC, trying to ditch photographers, and then trying to grapple with the fact that he was taken from this earth even earlier than his father.  The Kennedys definitely held a mythic sway over me when I was young, and they do even to this day.

Things definitely changed that day.  Innocence was lost.  Feelings of pessimism, doubt, and sarcasm took over our national being.  Sad to say, we'll never be the same.  I wish I lived in Pleasantville, but I don't.  Maybe that's why I cry when I see vintage reels of Walter Cronkite announce Kennedy's death: I want to live in a time of humbleness and simplicity so much that it chokes me up.  Sure, I wouldn't have this blog to type away on every now and again, but maybe we'd all be a little bit happier as a nation.