Holidays

With all the changes of the last couple years I met my biggest challenge this year. The holidays as a married couple. My family is here, and Peter's family is in Missouri. When we first started dating, I missed a Thanksgiving to go home with him to meet his family. They really are great and I lucked out in the in-law department. The following year Peter was here for Thanksgiving, but as we were not married, we spent Christmas with our respective families. This year was different. We wanted to be together, but that meant "choosing a side". Since we live here and my family is here, I gave Peter the choice, Thanksgiving? or Christmas? He chose to spend Christmas in Missouri with his family. December got here and as we started packing our things, it got tough. I have ALWAYS been with my family on Christmas. We have a lot of family traditions and see both sides of our extended family between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I was getting emotional, not to mention, I was almost 6 months pregnant and extra hormonal. We had a great time with Peter's family. They always make me feel right at home and I loved being a part of a new tradition, but I missed my Christmas. This holiday season was a challenge, and I know there will be bigger challenges and more challenges like it. Marriage is a lot of compromise and family can make things complicated.

However Peter made me feel so much better, he knew that I was hang a hard time not being with my family and he talked with me about how our family will make our own traditions. We both have something we are used to but we are going to be able to do that now for our children. It might take us awhile to figure out what that is, but we get to create our own Christmas memories and that the important part is us being together.