Traditions!

Last night was the Teddy Bear Toss game for the Winterhawks. It's impossible to say why it's the greatest thing ever, but it really is. Something about all of those bears raining down out of the stands is just amazing. Even if you get pelted by more than a few of them! Expert tip, if you are going to take a picture or record any of it, TWO hands firmly on your phone or it will go flying. Also expect to lose any unfinished drink in your possession. We had glass seats one season and we thought they'd be fun for Teddy Bear Toss because we could actually get our bears right on to the ice instead of somewhere in the seats for someone else to finish their journey. But what we did not think of were the HUNDREDS of bears that don't quite make it over the glass and you get pelted from behind and from the front as they hit the glass and ricochet back. A little higher up is much nicer.

Anyway...it's the best game of the year. And it helps set up a great holiday mood. 

We missed it live last year and had to watch on TV because Brent had Covid. It was still fun on TV but not the same feeling as being in a hail of bears and stuffies. 

Traditions are very specific things, right?

I've talked before about how our traditions aren't they typical ones, but they are ours. We always watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to start the season. Usually Thanksgiving night, but at least by Friday sometime. And we cap it off Christmas Eve with Scrooged. The movies in-between vary, though Elf seems to have become an every year standard as well. We recently added going to get soup dumplings at the mall a few days before Christmas. It morphed out of an older tradition that got put aside. There used to be a great candy store in the mall and we would go get candy for our stockings (yes, we picked our own stocking candy) when Din Tai Fun opened we grabbed reservations for dinner there on candy shopping night. The older candy store closed and a new one opened. It was bigger but somehow not as great. But the soup dumplings made up for it. Even if we don't get the candy, we get the dumplings. 

We stopped exchanging gifts a few years ago. Brent and I stopped almost 10 years ago and we stopped with Katie the year before the pandemic. We decided that the trips we take are more fun than any presents so football games, Disney, those became our presents. We're all adults and if we want something we just buy it ourselves. It works for us. 

So not a lot of big traditions or standard traditions around Christmas anymore. Every few years we try and get a Zoo Lights in. I try and find at least one Christmassy/Holiday themed event. This year it was Liberace and Liza: Holiday at the Mansion. Every year we say THIS is the year we make it to The Grotto and then don't. But those things are usually just me and Brent now since Katie lives in Bend. 

And this year, it will all just be me and Brent because Katie isn't coming home for Christmas. She came up for Thanksgiving with her girlfriend and roommate. That was the holiday we got. Her girlfriend doesn't celebrate Christmas so Katie decided that the better holiday for the family would be Thanksgiving. It's actually my favorite holiday so that worked for me.

I know it's a weird one to be a favorite, and Christmas for sure used to be when Katie was younger, but Thanksgiving is so much lower stress. Just a big meal. Then a few days to lounge around eating leftovers and watching football. I mean The Game is stressful but it's not like it's something we have to prepare for, we just watch on the edge of our seats. 

But anyway....

Katie isn't coming home for Christmas this year. 

I've talked about how we are lucky to have had her for all the holidays for as long as we did. That Brent and I stopped going home for all of them at 18. Christmas a few years, then we didn't do that after Katie was born. The first year because Brent was on watch Christmas week (we actually moved Christmas that year and celebrated on a different date, it was just us and it worked better, I felt so early Catholic church!) Then later because it was easier not to pack up Katie and try to travel during that stretch. The few years we lived back in New Mexico were crazy stressful for Christmas. One year we woke up early and had our family Christmas breakfast and gifts. Then packed up the car and went to my brother's house for lunch and gifts and games with my side of the family. Then bailed around 4:30 from that and went back to our house where Brent's parents were coming up from Las Cruces to celebrate so we had late Christmas dinner and gift exchange with them. Wiped out. 

But after we moved away from New Mexico again we just kept visits to off times of the year. The year after Jack died Ann tried to come up for Christmas, thinking that she might just start coming up here every year to celebrate with us. That was the year of the freak snow. Katie had over a month off for Christmas break that year because of the snow before and the snow after Christmas. Ann was supposed to come in a few days ahead of Christmas and ended up finally getting in Christmas night. Then she almost couldn't get back out again. She decided never again. 

So it was just the three of us. 

And now it will be just the two of us. 

And if I keep telling myself it is fine and we have been lucky to have had her for as long as we did I might just make it through without any tears. 

Wish me luck!