Ghosts of Christmas Past

For most of the past seventeen years, I have tortured my husband and kids by making them stand next to each other while a picture is taken for a Christmas card. Such child abuse, I know. At least that is what all the wailing has told me.

Once I have a family picture I have mailed it out with a witty and entertaining letter to friends and family.

Right now, I'm thinking this will be one of the few years we miss. Since I seem to be lacking the energy to shower, get dressed, or brush my teeth, Christmas cards seems rather superfluous and a bit over reaching.

In addition I don't seem to have much to blog about because I don't seem to leave my house much lately. Apparently if you want to have something exciting and entertaining to write about you have to live an exciting and entertaining life.

Laying on the couch with your head under the covers pretending that the world will leave you alone doesn't seem to fall into the great blog material category.

Unless you are Crash Test Dummy, and then she just makes things up or embellishes as it were. But if you are going to embellish you have to have more than one functioning brain cell, which I am afraid to say is not true in my case.

Which brings me to my brilliant idea that I will post many of my previous Christmas card pictures. That is where the ghost of Christmas past comes in.

This picture documents the first year I had a child and felt inclined towards this obsessive behaviour. We had been married for seven years when Trent was born. The adoption process had taken four painfully long years. I had spent seven childless Christmases dreaming, praying, even pleading for a child. In case you didn't know Christmas is the second worst holiday to be infertile, next to Mother's Day of course.

Look at that precious smile. Such a cutie patootie, if I do say so myself. And boy I look like a child. Seventeen years is a long time.

This Christmas was a magical one for me, because it was the first one I had my very own child to buy presents for. And it really was as fun as I had imaginied. Taking him to sit on Santa's lap and dressing him up in cute Christmas clothes.

Of course he did not appreciate what it was all about, but he did look cute in all the pictures. This was also before he had an opinion about pictures, just wait til the next ones I post. Not a lot of smiling going on.

Maybe these pictures of the Ghosts of Christmas past will work on the Scrooge in me, just like it did in A Christmas Carol. One never knows. There is always hope, isn't there?