A Tree, a Holiday, a Milestone, a Memory

I put my Christmas tree up this weekend. It looks beautiful...one of my secret pleasures of the holidays. I love to sit and look at it in the evenings when the kids are in bed and the house is quiet. I have so many favorite ornaments on there. Picking one as my most favorite would be impossible. I'll upload a pic as soon as I can find my camera!

Christmas has always been a love/hate holiday for me, and this year is no different. Most of my memories of my Dad are centered around Christmas morning, so while I love the excitement of my own kids, the little girl in my heart is saddened at the loss of her own childhood Christmases. This will be our last Christmas in Norfolk...our last in the continental US. We'll go up to NJ for Christmas morning again this year, and it will be wonderful to be surrounded by family. Unfortunately, I'm already depressed about next year. We'll be all alone on an island. No family to share dinner with. On top of that, we may be getting ready to say goodbye to Daddy for a year. There's a 50/50 chance that my husband will have to go to Afghanistan for a year beginning in January 2010. We would have only been on Oahu for about 6 months.

Another love/hate moment is coming up this Saturday. My baby will turn one year old on Saturday. He's my last one, so this is an extremely bittersweet milestone for me. I'm not ready for him to grow up, and I find myself feeling like I blinked and his first year is over!

I'm really looking forward to Dancing With the Stars tonight. It's my "guilty pleasure" this season. I've even been known to put the kids to bed early just so I can watch, uninterrupted! Does that make me a bad Mommy??? LOL

I guess maybe I'm so melancholy and reflective since I didn't get any sleep last night. EJ is sick and was up all night, so I'm pretty tired. The kids are down for naps, so I think I might get a shower, put in a load of laundry or two and lay down for a few minutes. This afternoon, I'm cleaning the carpets (thank you, EJ! LOL).