I Love Christmas!

Who doesn't love Christmas?! As the song goes, "It's the most wonderful time of the year." Christmas is obviously great. I may be biased, but personally I think it's especially great at my house! Our family traditions are what makes Christmas extra special and extra great in our house. Every year, I look forward to the same things and I know they will still be the same the next year and the next!

It kind of looks like it's snowing outside, but I promise there was no white Christmas in Dallas!

Our traditions start, of course, on Christmas Eve!
Every year, after we go to mass, as soon as we come home we get our "Christmas jammies"! This is so exciting to put on our jammies while we wait for dinner and we wake up ready for Santa in the morning dressed in our Christmas jammies! My sister and I usually match, too, which is fun and a flashback of our younger years when we usually matched!

I know it's blurry, but it's the only picture we have of our pj's! I wanted one of us in them, but it didn't happen.

Our dinner Christmas Eve is also one of my favorite traditions, as it is also one of the most delicious! We have home made, green pasta with salmon and tomato sauce; it's red and green so it's festive and it is seriously so, so good! Definitely one of my favorite meals of all time. (Sadly, no picture of this. I was too busy eating to remember to take a picture!)

Then, Christmas Eve night my sister and I usually spend the night together so we can wake up in the morning and see what "Santa" left. This year was sadly the first year we didn't do that, but I did wake up her in time to go open presents! We are instructed what time we can get up (it gets later every year as we get older, this year it was no earlier than 10 which was fine by us!), and we call our parents when we're ready. We wait at the top of the stairs for the "ok" to come down! We see what Santa left first and then we open the rest of the presents!

This is me, checking out what I got! haha

The aftermath of present opening! We pretty much destroyed our living room.

The rest of the day is my favorite way to spend Christmas; doing absolutely nothing. If we change out of our pajamas, the day is a fail. We stay in our pajamas all day long, and just relax! It's greatness.

This is what I was doing all day; laying on the couch with my laptop of course in my jammies!

My dad cooks another amazing dinner Christmas night; Beef Wellington and for dessert, Chocolate souffle. I don't even really like beef, but this is amazing. It is beef filled with puff pastry and just so, so yummy! We only eat this like once or twice a year, so it's really special!

Yumm!!

That concludes the Basso family Christmas traditions! I hold these traditions so close, and I think it's something that we all look forward to! I hope that these traditions can live on through the years and maybe one day my sister and I will share these with our families! Merry Christmas to you all, I hope your day was wonderful!

'Tis the Season to be Jolly...

It’s Christmas time, and as the song goes, it’s the time to be jolly, right? Well needless to say, we haven’t exactly spent the last couple of months at my house being “jolly”, nor has it been easy to jump right into the Christmas spirit. When someone you love is sick, it’s hard sometimes to focus on other things, and it's too easy to focus so much on the fact that it sucks that Anna is sick, so we might forget how much we have to be grateful for.

This Christmas is certainly not a “normal” Christmas. Our Christmas tree is a tiny, fake tree and is pretty much ornament-less. Our house is not decorated for Christmas, like it has been every other year. My sister is certainly not feeling “normal” with her hair falling out and battling nausea off and on. The fact that our family has been in and out of the hospital in the last couple months is certainly not normal. The fact that we didn’t manage to send out Christmas cards to friends in family is certainly not normal. The fact that we never made it to church is not normal. The fact that I am traveling by myself this Christmas to visit family instead of our whole family going is not normal.

However, even though we have these abnormalities this Christmas, there is so much greatness this season. The fact that we have so many people praying for my sister and our family; friends, family and even strangers. The beautiful tree in our front yard, Anna’s “Angel Tree” started by dear friends to surprise Anna when she came home one night, covered in ornaments donated by friends and family to symbolize their prayers. The fact that although the inside of our house may be lacking Christmas decorations, that our house is lit up beautifully on the outside, a wonderful gift of time and effort by the amazing people and family my dad works with. The fact that my sister is home, and feeling mostly good and can celebrate Christmas like normal and not in the hospital. The fact that even though Santa’s elves in our house have been a little busy as of late, Santa still managed to come to our house, and bring great joy to us all. The fact that thanks to a great bloggy friend we are sending happy new year cards, and spreading the knowledge that 2010 is going to be a great year of healing for us. The fact that I am able to go to South Carolina to represent our family and celebrate the season with my grandparents, cousins, Aunts and Uncles. The fact that we are all together, that we have each other. That we experienced the first White Christmas in Dallas in 83 years, which as a great family friend pointed out is the sign of miracles.

I remember reading MckMama’s blog back when her baby son Stellan was so sick, and her post about their families “new normal”.  A lot of that is what we are experiencing now. Although a year ago, this Christmas would not be considered normal, this is our new normal. We are learning to roll with the punches, play the hand we are dealt, make lemonade out of the lemons we’ve been dealt. This is a new, but temporary, normal. This is normal for now, and with God’s help, next year at this time things will be back to the old normal. All the familiar signs of the season will be back, and all the signs of a family struggling through a hard time will just be memories of this year.

Most importantly, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve and a wonderful Christmas, spending quality time just the four of us, enjoying amazing meals, and just enjoying each others company. That is reason enough, in my opinion, to be jolly this Christmas season.

Our house, with our beautiful Christmas lights and snow on the ground! (Sorry for the poor quality, it was taken on my iPhone. Also, this picture doesn't include the beautiful Angel Tree... I was just trying to get the snow on the ground, and this was the part of the house most lit up!)


 Merry Christmas to you all & your families! :)