Building The Love Shack

I am finally sitting at the computer. It seems like a long time sense I have had time to write, or even to think. I have been back to work now for a few weeks and as usual the phone for work is ringing off the hook. That’s not complaint, I actually like to work and am glad to be back.

Add on the new puppy, Romeo, who is now I would say forty percent house broken, or I am forty percent catching him on time, and I seem to have been one busy girl.

Now that I have had a chance to sit down, I am thinking Christmas. Yes, I call it Christmas.  I am not one who cares what religion a person is or how they chose to honor their god. But to me Christmas is Christmas.

I don’t think you have noticed or maybe you might have, with all our difficulties you have never seen me mention God. I don’t, because I am a spiritual person, not a religious one. Christmas to me, is family time. Friend time. Time to look back and take the good forward and leave the bad behind. It’s the end of the year and time to start looking to the plans for the next. But before we can start that New Year, we celebrate, with Christmas.

No shopping is done, not a gift is bought. Why not, because Husband and I started a tradition twenty-one years ago. On our very first real date, the one where we were not at party or social event, he took me to Niagara on The Lake. It was the first weekend in December and we had a lovely day and started our Christmas Shopping. Every year sense then, we start our Christmas Shopping on that day and have never changed it.

Some years we have gone alone, other times we have gone with family and other times we have gone with friends. It is still my favorite place, and we will go this Saturday.  This year we are taking the same friend we took last year. That is one of our family traditions.

 

 

 

We also have another tradition, putting up the Christmas Lights. When the kids were younger they helped decorate the inside and outside of the house. As the children got their own places, that became just us to do. Then the children got a little older and another tradition got started. My son comes over to help with our Christmas Lights and then Husband will go to his house to help him hang his lights. This year we added another helper. Our grandson Lennon is now nine and was able to help with the lights. That brought a big smile to my face watching the three of them start of our family Holiday Season.

Christmas Day is quite at our house. Husband and I spend it together.  Then we meet a good friend for dinner at the Old Mills in Ancaster and follow that by stopping to visits friends for a Christmas Drink.  The kids are off and running around that day visiting with the other sides of the family they need to see. On Boxing Day we are all together for our Traditional Christmas Dinner, which actually has no tradition, as I cook something different each year.

 

 

This year we are starting a new tradition, Driving up to check on the Love Shack. Next year we are planning to spend Christmas there. I was wondering how that would change our tradition. We will have to make sure, our friend who we spend Christmas with each year for dinner, joins us at the cottage.

Until now, I have really never thought about how many traditions we have set up. How each years I buy the family members something that they collect. When we send the check off to the Shelter. Taking the dog to go see Santa Puppy to get his picture taken. The fact that I wrap the pets present and Daddy opens them. I also wrap his present from me, but he wraps all the rest. There is a bakery we order from every year, and the neighbor who I also buy a present for her dog every year.

My father- in-law brings the wine and a traditional Italian Christmas Cake every year for the family dinner. My Husband always decorates the outside of the house and set the table for Christmas Dinner. I decorate the inside and do the shopping for the meals. We do the tree together and I always light the candle in memory of those friends, family and fur babies who have passed.

Today, I will start the shopping list for gifts, it gets altered each year because we always find something special in Niagara in on the Lake. Today, I will open up the cook books and find something different to cook on Boxing Day.

The Christmas Tree has been bought on the weekend and it was put up on the stand. Tonight, Husband and I will decorate it. That should be interesting with the new puppy in the house. We will also be going through the Christmas Decorations, as some of them will now be put in bins with the plan to have them at the cottage for next year.

Without thinking about it, we have made so many traditions. Time has changed some of the traditions. Things have been added and some have been lost, with loosing family members. But the one thing that never changes, is that Christmas comes each year. Each year, we celebrate the family.

I would love to hear your traditions. I look forward to your post . And I hope you are enjoying The Being of the Season.