More Than I Knew

Folks we are headed across the vast states of Montana and Wyoming today and tomorrow to spend a woefully short Christmas weekend with the MM's family.  I am clean out of vacation days and must return to the grind next week. Boo.
This year the Christmas season has felt like a blur, or happening to other people in some sort of parallel universe that doesn't include month-long head colds and babies.  We cut and decorated our woodland tree + a few other decorations around the house, but a few things have been missing this year. 

In trying to put my finger on it, I think I have missed baking and eating the usual Christmas goodies, like cheese straws and chocolate peppermint bark. Cooking is my connection to seasons and holidays more than I knew.

And I've missed making it to church for advent services like Lessons and Carols.  And we haven't listened to Handel's Messiah enough. Seriously if I had a day to make cheese straws while listening to the Messiah and then go hear Lessons and Carols it would really be Christmas. 

Except that it IS Christmas and unto us a child is born and his name is Ford, so over many rivers and through some woods to the grandparents' house we go to spend a joyous weekend with family.  The cheese straws will just have to wait until 2012.  Merry Christmas to you all!