A Difficult Holiday

As you can tell, I have not had a post for a while, and once again it's because life has took a turn on me and my family. Last weekend, the weekend before Christmas, my aunt passed away. I was away with one of my friends at a wedding when I got the news from my mother. I was shocked, because it came totally out of left field. So once I composed myself, I continued to push through and be happy throughout the wedding festivities, but as soon as I got in the car it was on to planning getting me with my mom's side of the family.

I was quickly on a plane with the thousands of people trying to get home for cheerful reasons.

It was hard to see my mom go through the events that took place the next three days, but I am so thankful I got to be with her as a support, especially with my dad unable to get up to the upper west coast and my husband being gone with the deployment.

We then said our tearful goodbyes and headed back to Texas {I convinced my mom to just fly back with me and accompany me on my drive home}. So we then had a quick 24 hour turn around for me to unpack, then repack, and have a half day of work, then load up the dogs and drive back to Arizona for Christmas. No worries, I am still out of breath from the whole experience.

To make the trip even more interesting we got stuck in New Mexico for an extra day due to a massive snow storm that shut down I-10. Yeah, not so fun with two dogs, an emotional mother, and one tiny hotel room. We made due with what we could and finally made it back home one hour before our annual Christmas Eve party.

Needless to say we were both emotionally and physically drained.

The party was a success, even though it was more low key than years past, and it was great to be back in the desert after a year long hiatus.

As for Christmas morning, I received a great gift, a phone call from my husband saying he was going to open the gifts we send him with us as we opened ours. It made my day, and made my mom cry {happy tears}. The dogs even got in on the action, making wrapping paper confetti.

All in all it was a good Christmas and really got back to the heart of things with the recent death in our family. It made all of us even more thankful for the time we have together and those little moments that make everything brighter.

To all of you, I hope your holidays were full of cheer, laughter and light!