A Long December

Here we are at the last day of the month for the last month of the year. December was a hard month for me. It brought back some unpleasant memories, and as joyful as the holiday season is supposed to be, it can also be a hard time of the year for a lot of people.

This past week or so was pretty good, though, comparatively…granted, I’ve been sick for the majority of the past couple of weeks with the stomach flu, followed by the chest cold, but other than that it was good. At least I didn’t have to go into work last week. And on the days I wasn’t feeling completely lousy and contagious, I got to spend quality time with friends and family.

The weekend before Christmas I took care of my youngest nephew, David, and it was fun to spend time with him. He actually said to me, “I hardly ever get to spend time with just you, so I would like for you to (spend time with just me).”

He’s so stinkin’ cute, and already quite the sweet-talker at the age of six. He had a point, though – as the youngest of my four nephews, I rarely get to spend any one-on-one time with him, thus it was good to do that. We played games and went out for lunch one day, and he fell asleep in my lap as we watched a movie. The next day we decorated Hanukkah cookies for him to take home, even though Hanukkah was already over by then, but that’s okay.

We also decorated some cookies for my mom to put out for everyone on Christmas Eve, which is when my family gets together to go to Christmas-Eve church service (for those of us that are Christians), and then everyone—Jewish and Christian—is at my parents’ house for dinner, gift-exchanging, and games. And that night my oldest nephew, Jake, beat me at Guitar Hero again. However, I still had flu-like symptoms that night (it was on-again, off-again for several days), so it was an unfair victory on his part. Even so, it’s probably as it should be that my 15-year-old nephew is better at video games than am I.

I also got to spend time with my “sister” Christy and her family while they were in town for Christmas. They drove in from Golden, Colorado, and were here in KC for an entire week, so that was awesome. Biologically speaking, she and I are not sisters, but we’ve known each other and have been best friends all of our lives. Both of us are the youngest and only girls in our families, so growing up we saved each other from the world of older brothers.

She’s married and has two adorable little girls (Haley, 3, and Sabrina [my God-daughter], 19 months), and they all came over to help decorate cookies with me and David, although I personally ended up taking pictures instead of decorating. The photos in this post are from that afternoon of cookie-decorating entertainment.

A friend of the family, Sue, was also in town and stayed here at my parents’ house for a couple of days after Christmas. She and I had lots of theological conversations, and I helped her set up her own blog while she was here, so that was fun.

Thus, although December was a hard month in some aspects, it was great to spend time with friends and family over the holidays, and to celebrate Christmas together.

And tomorrow is the start of a new year! I don’t tend to make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I kind of am: My goal, or resolution, is to focus on living more simply. This goal of simplicity entails several aspects, which I’ll probably be exploring in my future blog postings.

That reminds me – I’ve been lured into the world of WordPress for blogging (it does offer better features), so I’m putting together a new blog with that and will be posting on there instead of this blog once I get it all set up. I should have it ready to go pretty soon here, so I’ll provide a link to that sometime in the next week or so.

Until then, have a happy new year!