Holidays are here! It's hard to believe that it's Christmas time again--as I get older I swear that time goes by at a faster rate.  I don't know if that is really possible, but it sure seems that way.  As our family is getting bigger it is getting harder to gather everyone together to celebrate-new mates, children moving away, jobs interfer---I miss the times of my childhood, living 20 miles from my grandparents, we had no trouble travelling to grandma's house.  I remember how her house was always filled to the brim with family, wonderful smells of your favorite food, deserts, coffee brewing--and all the stories that the adults would tell.  We kids, would play in the back room--run through the kitchen to grab a cookie, and go outside to play in the leaves and pine straw.  Growing up in East Texas, the weather was generally mild and we took advantage of the beautiful weather.  Mama Dickey had a small tv-my Dad and I would find the Dallas Cowboys football game and I'd sit in his lap while we rooted for the Cowboys to win.  We almost always opened our gifts late in the afternoon-it was so hard to wait-we'd go in and look for our names, pick the gifts up, gently shake or squeeze them-we'd been warned, "they might break"!  They family would gather and one of us kids would be asked to start handing out the gifts, no a job that any of us really wanted, but someone, probably my Mom, kept track of who had done it the year before and the job got spread around.  There was my family, Mom,Dad, me, and after a few years--my sister and brother.  My grandparents and my aunt, Ann, who was a year younger than me, my uncle and his wife, and a couple of aunts that were alway there.  The tree had presents piled around it and sometimes there wasn't much room to walk--with the presents, the tree and all the people.  But mostly I remember the love that was in the room.  My grandparents, my parents, the aunts, I can't remember any "drama" we all had a good time, we were glad to be together, to be able to share our favorite foods and to give one another a small gift, a outward sign of the love we all shared.  As I grew older, Christmas lost a lot of the fun, the kids grew up had families of their own, and distance made it hard to have the kind of Christmas we had has a child.  I miss those Christmas' , I miss the people that have left us, I miss the wide eyed wonder that we'd see in the little kids eyes. I miss my own small daughter's delight, when she and her Dad and her Papa, "discovered" reindeer poop in the yard, a sure sigh that Santa had visited, while they were out  looking at the Christmas lights!  I miss the "tracks" so carefully laid out around my uncles house,to be discovered by our kids. I guess part of what made those Christmas so great, was not the gifts that were bought, but the memories made, so many of them include people that we lost, but can always be with us, because they loved us enough to take the time to give us memorable moments.
So take the time to make your own moments, give each other something no one can take away or replace--give each other love, time, and make some memories.  You'll be glad you did someday and you'll treasure them if you do.