Sunday, December 25, 2011

12 hours of Christmas


We Hope that everyone had a blessed Christmas

This year I was SOOO Ready for Christmas, this time of year has become one of my favorites. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then Jillian's birthday all right in a row! To be honest I used to hate this time of year, the cold, snow, stress of shopping. But having kids makes you relive the magic that we used to have when we were little.

I had my tree up before Thanksgiving this year (Ryan laughed at me!) and 5 days later my sweet baby was diagnosed with Cancer. This changed everything, I did all my Christmas shopping via the internet from Helen Devos Childrens Hospital room # 913. And was only able to buy the girls things because of all the sweet people that helped us out this year. It was truly difficult to get in the Christmas Spirit, for a few different reasons. 1 being that we have spend 1/2 of December at the hospital, all of our time has been focused on the girls (Having 2 under 2 is NOT easy let alone having a child that is sick and needs care all the time). 2. We were not able to focus on any of the holiday traditions, making cookies, listening to Christmas music, seeing Santa, drinking hot coco and snuggling, our time at home was spent filling out forms, taking care of Mallory's needs and reading up about Cancer.

Mallory does not sleep very long, she still only eats 2 ounces, she only sleeps for 2 hours at a time still. It's not getting any better, nor is it getting any easier. I am exhausted from the time I get up to the time I go to bed.

She finished her first round of chemo on Friday, they did a blood transfusion and we were home at 6 pm. I came home to a messy house, dishes in the sink, and toys scattered everywhere and somehow in someway this seems so petty to me. I just don't have time to be a perfectionist, I don't have time to worry about something maybe I'll get around to in a few weeks.



I just had no time to get in the "spirit" this year, that changed this morning at 9 am when Jillian finally woke up. She opened her first gift and would NOT put it down, she played and played and played. Finally we decided that we were just going to let her play with it and we'd open gifts later on. So off to the shower I went, got Jillian to open a few more presents, took a break played and played and played. Jillian and I headed over to my moms for a little bit to say hi and grab the gifts they had for the girls and came home. Ryan and I made dinner (which was SOOOOOO YUMMY, we have been blessed by the take a meal website since we just did not plan on having to stay home and usually we go to our parents houses for Christmas Eve and Christmas day but some WONDERFUL people made a nice Christmas dinner possible for us this year and we cannot THANK you enough!)




We spent 12 hours opening gifts, we took our time, laughed, and just had a riot. It was nice to spend the entire day focused on our family. We are strong and although we missed out on a lot, this Christmas will be etched in the back of our minds forever. It's been a tough year, but this was a great way to end it. We are welcoming 2012 with open arms, we are praying everyday that we continue to be strong, that next year will be better.

Merry Christmas Everyone
-Ashley