First Holiday Away

Tomorrow will be the very first major holiday that Tyler and I will spend far from our families. I keep wondering to myself, when will it set in that we won't be with our families when they gather to feast and enjoy each other? Well, I think it's easy for me to look at it differently this year.

We've been experiencing somewhat of an unintended newlywed stage. Since moving into the house here and unpacking and re-figuring life out together, it's really been blissful. Ya know, like those first few months of living with your husband or wife. I've found myself laughing harder in the last month than I have in a long time... mostly at the ridiculous things Tyler says. Our first year of marriage was a blast, and if it was the hardest year of our marriage like "they" say, then we're in for an easy ride. Our second year was great as well, just a little less normal, obviously. So now that we are on our own again, it's like relearning how much we thoroughly enjoy life together while living in a sense of normalcy again.

So here's how it is for me this year: being far from our families this year is super sad and I'm definitely counting down the days til we are home for Christmas (33 days!), but it's quite exciting to get to spend this holiday in our own way. One of the fun things about marriage is getting to establish tradition or even just get to start our things for our own family.

It helps that we have such a great church family here! I love having this family and people are so great about taking care of us! We had so many invites for Thanksgiving, so there was never a chance we'd be "alone". So we will be spending our Thanksgiving with some of our new family, and I couldn't be happier. I'll miss the crazy noise level of my parent's house, all the kids causing pandemonium, and looking around being thankful that my sister's are the ones that get to take them home (the best part of being an aunt right!?).

So maybe later on, after Christmas or some other time, it will hit me how far away we are from our families and how much we miss them... But right now we are still living the life we prayed for for over a year. It really is bliss for us. It definitely helps to soften the blow of not seeing our families very often. But this year, my biggest thanks to God is that he provides time and time again. I never know how he will provide, what it will actually look like, but I know it will happen. He's never let us down. This year he's blessed us big time with our life here in Tracy.