Traditions

Tonight I'm thankful for Thanksgiving traditions.  This is the time of year when I truly appreciate it when everything is the same as it's always been.  I may be off at college now, but there are certain things that I know won't change this Christmas season.  For starters, I am painfully aware that I will be woken up at 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning to make the seven hour drive to Battle Creek, Nebraska.  I am definitely a morning person, but that's a little early for even me!  Nevertheless, going to Aunt Mary's house for Thanksgiving is a tradition that I wouldn't trade for anything.  This year especially I'll appreciate the time with my family.

Another tradition is breaking out the Christmas music.  Typically we add a new CD to the collection each year, but we still have the CDs that I listened to for as long as I can remember.  Anytime I hear Amy Grant or Mannheim Steamroller, I get this indescribable feeling inside of me.  It's like I'm a little girl again anticipating the magic of Christmas morning.  A couple of my newer favorite Christmas CDs are by Point of Grace.  They somehow did not survive the transfer from the family computer to my laptop this summer.  I actually went into panic mode last night, tearing apart the house looking for them to re-load them, only to find them twenty minutes later outside in the van.  Crisis was avoided, but narrowly.  Christmas without my music is un-imaginable.

Setting up the Christmas tree when we get back from Nebraska is an adventure each year.  We're lame and have one of those fake trees, so my dad and brothers get us started by putting all the branches in the right places.  Then my mom and whoever she can get to help her string up the lights.  This is the most stressful part because if any part of the light string doesn't light up, we have to put everything on hold and run to the hardware store and get more. After all of that boring stuff, we get to the fun part: ornaments.  We all sit together in the living room and my parents give my brothers and I each a gift bag.  We open these and inside is our new ornament for the year.  It's always fun seeing what creative things they pick out representing the year we've nearly completed.  The rest of the ornaments we've acquired over the years all go up haphazardly over the rest of the tree.  It isn't picture perfect by department store standards, but it's perfect in my eyes.  Those ornaments never change.  Each year they're the same, and I can count on that!  It's like getting to see an old friend again when I pull them out and hang them up.  That's probably a really bad analogy, but it's how I feel :)

The only thing that's different this year is that I won't get to enjoy the magic for as long.  I'll be going back to school a day after the tree gets up.  I'll be sad because I'll have to wait for two more weeks to actually feel like it's Christmas at the Cline house.  But I guess I'll be ok because I get to go back to school and see these lovely faces!  Did I mention how thankful I am for them, or how much I miss them??  They make it ok to go back :)