Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
I wanted to indulge myself and write from more of a personal perspective….I love The Barn, but today I am celebrating my children.
This year was my turn to have my children (Alex and Connor) on Christmas Eve. They are spending today with their Father. I sincerely hope they are enjoying their time with him.
As I thought about (and planned) what my time on Christmas Eve might look like with my children I suddenly realized that, while I look at them as ‘perpetual young boys’ from a Mother’s perspective, in reality my beautiful boys are both young adults. It occurred to me that it might be time to experiment with how I celebrate our time together. As a result, everything we did yesterday was not traditional (in the sense that they have come to know Christmas Eve)!
We started the day with breakfast at a very nice restaurant…the usual brotherly bickering and testosterone puffing was part of the conversation, but I enjoyed the freedom of being out of the kitchen and so I sat and enjoyed the show! From there we went and got ice cream at 31 Flavors (I got a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge in honor of my Dad….YUM!).
Next, we visited downtown Castle Rock on some errands (drove by The Barn, of course) and finally found ourselves at the local outlet mall shopping for clothes. I had made reservations at a very upscale restaurant for dinner and neither of my children were dressed for the affair…so, my credit card got an unexpected workout!
After that, Alex and Connor decided that we needed to play some games before dinner, so we went home and played some Wii games in my basement…I laughed until I cried.
Eventually we got ready for dinner and left for the restaurant. Here is where I truly started feeling that there is a lot of room in our lives to explore celebrating the Holidays outside of the usual family traditions.
The restaurant was packed!! I looked around and saw families, couples and groups of friends enjoying Christmas Eve. Some patrons actually wore Santa hats and other festive wear. It was delightful and the conversation was wonderful…lots of reminiscing, talking about our futures, exchanging ideas and being a close family.
After dinner we drove up to Denver see the Christmas lights at The Denver Zoo…something I had done with a friend last year and I hoped my children would enjoy this year. It was spectacular….not only were the lights brilliant, but we were able to see many animals (rhinos, elephants, giraffes, etc…). What a treat! The icing on the cake was the dusting of a snow storm that came through while we were walking around.
The highlight of the Zoo visit came when my 22 year old looked at me and said “Mom, I wanna come back and see all of the animals”. Suddenly, I was looking at my 5 year old again. I will never forget it.
I think my future holds lots of Holidays with unusual and ‘nontraditional’ ways of celebrating and I can’t wait!
Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year!
Catherine
