Our house is a hodge podge of Christmas lights and furniture shoved in the wrong corners to accommodate an outdoor tree in our indoor space but it’s our first Christmas at The Burrow and we are not complaining.

The interior temperature is appropriate and comfortable (even though my dad says he still thinks it’s cold) and we all have had such fun embracing the holiday in our new home and even Otto is known to walk through the house with a happy sigh and to announce to anyone within earshot, “I love our new house.”

The tiny dog is balanced on top of a stack of floor pillows attacking a too loved dog toy in the shape of a bright yellow duck and the giant dog is zonked out on the floor.

And maybe I think this house is the right temperature because I am continually finding myself to be uncomfortably and unexpectedly warm and it has me googling words like “hot flashes” and compulsively tossing off my socks and shedding my extra sweater layers.  What on earth, guys?  This cannot be happening yet.  Can it?

This weekend we decorated our tree and it was like a made for TV special with a photo montage echoing back to all the old Christmases I have spent with these children.  I hardly had time to pull out a few ornaments before the tree was mostly completed by my children – and artfully done too.  No one branch laden with ornaments.  No need to put the breakable ones up high.  Regular conversation and laughter while we told the stories of the ornaments as we pulled them out of their year long slumber.

And what a pleasant surprise to enjoy the gift of shared stories from all the past Christmases without a heavy burden of sadness and not a trace of bitterness and just a joy of what is.  Naturally, I can only speak for me and I am not in any way implying a forgetfulness or shoving aside of feelings.  Just that we could pull out an ornament from an early year of my marriage, I could tell the kids the story of how that heart shaped trinket landed on our tree and I could smile at what the memory was and let it be exactly that – a happy moment in a full life’s story.

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