christmas blues

I look forward to the 23rd, 24th and 25th of December all year long. They always prove to be three of my favorite days of the year; filled with family, love, peace, excitement and tradition. This year however things are not going exactly according to plan.
My nieces and nephew are sick. Okay, I know that for those of you that follow my (whole) family you know that this is nothing new. But this time Bailey has pneumonia, the docs are thinking Parker may have asthma which is causing her two month old cough to keep getting worse, and Grayson just spent last night in the ER and now we know that he has RSV! So my nieces and nephew are REALLY sick. We know that when family around us is sick there is a very good chance that one or all of us is going to catch what they have but we didn't drive all the way down here to not see them and I am not afraid of catching a cold. It makes me a little nervous for Sam to catch RSV but if it happens we will deal with it; it still won't make me not spend time with my sister and her family during Christmas. But for my sister when your children are sick, when you are getting NO sleep because of fussy, not sleeping kids, when you spend five hours in the ER on the 23rd it kind of puts a damper on your Christmas spirit. I hate that her family is not perfect right now; it breaks my heart. But she is the strongest person I know (proven last night when she held her son as he had tubes stuck up his nose and was just screaming, she sat there very calm and comforted him knowing that it needed to be done to help him...I would have NOT been able to be there for my child the way that she was for Grayson. I am just not that strong) and she will make it through this hard time and still make memories, have fun and keep a smile on her face.
SO sick kids have changed plans and made things a bit more complicated for the family but the weather is also not helping the holiday spirit. An ice storm hit this area on the 23rd (which is the night that our WHOLE family, mom's side, gets together; a huge party that we spent all day getting ready for) and so only a handful of the family was able to make it out for the party. There are people that have not met Sam that I was so excited to see and now I don't know when we will see them. Just a bit disappointed. But we made the most of it and some other family and friends came over instead. It was great to see them and we still ate great food and played games.
I am trying really hard not to get too down. I want to still enjoy our holiday, have fun with my family, my husband and make memories on Sam's first Christmas. But I have the Christmas blues. Things are not perfect and I know it will be 364 days before I get these days back again.
Tonight is an amazingly quiet dinner with just my parents, church and then off to sleep to wait for Santa. As long as I don't ruin the traditional Christmas eve bread things should go okay tonight. (keep your fingers crossed about the bread!)
I am going to get the Christmas spirit BACK, not sure how but I swear that I will.
Hope your holiday is illness and ice free!!

Here is one AWESOME moment from the party last night -


Note - Just to prove how strong my sister is go here to read just how she is NOT letting her sick kids take away her holiday spirit!