Tears and Traditions

I had a very emotional walk this morning for some reason.  I decided that tears are very therapeutic.  When the body gets stuffed to overflowing with emotion then the feel of hot, salty tears running down your cheeks is healthy and necessary.  This is my first holiday season without any children in my home and the flood of memories of holidays past and the traditions we celebrated year after year has been wonderful but also triggered the aforementioned overflow.  I remember right after Thanksgiving dinner getting so excited to set up the Christmas tree and bring out all the decorations.  Our tradition was to set the box of ornaments in front of me and I would take each one out and examine it for any needed repairs and then hand it to the first child in line.  They would go put it on the tree and then the next child would follow and so on.  The children loved to play with their "guys" in the tree.  Day after day they would set up little scenarios with their toys and play for hours.  Putting up the outside lights was always an adventure.  They all had jobs to do from unpacking the lights, to checking the strands, to hanging them up.  Dad always joked that he put the most expendable child on the top of the ladder and it usually ended up being Kyle, ha ha!  It was nice when they got tall enough to not need the ladder very much.  Brandon's job was to supervise and spend most of his time on the couch.  We have an advent calendar that I made while pregnant with my first child and they would love to wake up to candies every day through the month of December.  Logan is the earliest riser so he would always be the one to get it down.  Tanner usually didn't get his till after school because he was asleep until about 2nd period, ha ha!  We loved doing The Twelve Days of Christmas for people because it was so nerve wracking trying not to get caught.  They didn't love the caroling I made them do for our close friends but I did.  Posing for the Christmas card picture was always fun too, not.  I would read them Christmas stories all during the month of December.  We would sit in the living room with hot chocolate and I would read a chapter or a short story.  (Maybe the overflow isn't quite done yet).  They loved going to the mall together to get each other their secret Santa presents.  They had to try to hide the presents from each other and not let each other see which stores they went into.  Christmas Eve we always had a party and invited family and friends and then after everyone left we would have Dad read the Christmas story in Luke and we would open one present and then leave milk and cookies for Santa.  Christmas morning was a blast.  They would gather each other up from their bedrooms at 0 dark thirty and then come into our room and get us up.  Dad would always go first and film what Santa had brought them and then they were let loose.  I love that I can cry over these memories because that means they were special.  If we didn't have these traditions and they weren't so wonderful then they wouldn't be worth crying over.  I hope everyone who reads this establishes lots of traditions in their families and then is able to cry at their memories later in life.  We are starting new ones with our bigger and older family and that makes me very happy.  So, all you ladies my age and older, pass the eggnog and go ahead and have a good, refreshing cry:)