Christmas Eve.

It is my first Christmas away from home. It is my first Christmas without my dad. Yet it is also the first Christmas (out of eight) that Nick and I finally get to spend together. We are at his parents' house and I feel so blessed to have this home away from home with such magical people who I love as my own family. But it is also glaringly obvious to me that there is a Merry Christmas phone call that I won't get to make tomorrow. I am feeling the full range of emotions today; I feel happy, grateful, blessed, nostalgic, forlorn, and pensive.

Dad used to drag my brother and I to Christmas Eve mass every year where we would re-hear the story of Jesus' birth and sing carols. Taylor and I dreaded it. We were not raised religiously and thus felt no connection to the church service. To us, it was boring, redundant, and had nothing to do with us. We were insanely resistant and spent years complaining about my dad's blatant ignorance in choosing an activity that we couldn't all enjoy. In the last few years, we were finally able to convince him to do something else on Christmas Eve - head into San Francisco to see the lights at the Hyatt hotel. 

Today, I'm remembering those evenings spent at Christmas Eve mass. The last time we went, three years ago, we walked out of the service with my dad raving about one particular boy who had sung O Holy Night. Even months later, he would bring up that boy and how beautiful his voice was and how lovely his rendition had been. I'm thinking about all the complaints I made about being dragged to church and in hindsight, I don't think Dad had been asking too much of us. 

Enjoy your holiday. Hold your loved ones close. Be picky in the things in life that you oppose. Remember that the glass can always be half-full. My glass-half-full is being in this cozy home in Albany, filled with silly animals, delicious food, laughter, and the best "in-laws" a girl could ask for.