Family Time

Our family celebrated Christmas together on Saturday, December 29th this year. We wanted to wait until everyone was here and Andrew, Jennifer and the kids couldn't be here until Friday night. Everyone had a great time and my grandchildren had many lessons in sharing. It is hard when you are two and four years old to know that you can't open everyone's gifts and especially your cousin's gift. Seriously, they did excellent. They played very well together and it was a fun time for everyone. After the gift exchange we had our Christmas dinner together, with turkey and all of the fixin's. The girls helped to clean up the kitchen, then we decided to try something that none of us had been able to do yet and that was watch our home videos from when the boys were babies. This may sound like it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but watching pictures of their dad and hearing his voice brought back all sorts of memories. We all wish things were different but they are not and we will work to move ahead and make the best of a dark situation. We all considered this a part of the healing process and we were happy to see that we were successful in keeping ourselves together in viewing these videos. We reminisced and discussed some of the names Steve used to call us. Names such as "flame", "sir minus", "gomer pile", "Andy don't" and the list goes on. There is a history behind each nickname and without these videos we may have forgotten about some of them. We watched the boys all ice skating with the Arnold boys and just seeing who could go the fastest and scrape the most ice, pictures of their first birthday party, and saw lots of people who are no longer with us. Grandma and Grandpa Baughey were in a lot of these pictures. Fun times, for sure! Christmas this year was the best since Steve died (almost 7 years ago) and this has been one happy mom.