Merry Christmas Everyone!

What a year this year has been. I'm not going to bother going through all of the ups and downs of this year....suffice it to say that the spikes have been extreme. Ana wrote something in her post yesterday that struck a strong chord with me.  She wrote:

"I know the end of the year is an arbitrary division of time, but rituals and human-made markers do have their power, and for me the holidays are largely about pressing pause for a little bit and making sense of what it really means to have lived through another year. We think of what has passed and of what’s to come; we touch base with the people we love; we do a tally of sorts; and we fiercely hope we’ll all be able to gather again to do the same next year."

And I thought that was beautiful and so very true. The end of the year is really just the marker of another month on the calendar that's come and gone, but because of the power that we've given to the holidays, it does indeed give pause to look back and reflect and to sort of hit the reset button for the year ahead. It's like we're given an empty slate in a way and we have no idea what things will be written on that slate whether they are things that we can control and will write ourselves or the things that will be out of our control.

It's also a season that allows us to take stock in our lives. To look at how things have changed, how we've grown, how others have grown. Not that it's always a pleasant picture, but it's still a time when we can look at how different things are from Christmas' past.

Tonight we celebrated Christmas Eve at my Dad and Grandma's house as we do every year. That didn't change, but I noticed how many changes there were. My little brother, 14 years younger than me, was in town from college this year for Christmas eve. The boy who's diapers I used to change and spoil with mountains of gifts is now almost 19 years old and had a very small stack of gifts as he's at that age where he just wants money. Me and my sister are now both living in our own apartments for the first time. And it's hard to see the fact that this could be my grandma's last Christmas with us. None of that detracted from a wonderful night with lots of smiles. I thought of all of this while I was at my Grandma's and that's why I took the above picture. My sister, my brother and I haven't taken a picture together since my brother was probably 12. And we don't get together too often any more. So I wanted to have this.

Wherever you are, whatever you do, whatever has changed and whatever has remained the same, I hope that the holidays find your heart filled with warmth and comfort and that new memories are made and that smiles are shared among one another. This is my wish to you all. I'll see you all again very soon with my end of the year wrap up post and then hopefully MUCH more in 2014 than I have in 2013.