I posted photos of two ornaments I’d painted and then blogged about them a couple of weeks ago. Bex expressed a wish to own the star-shaped one, so I put it in my Etsy shop and she promptly bought it. I brought it to Omaha with me so I could mail it as soon as I got here. Ha.

After a week in Omaha, I remembered the star. I finally mailed it TODAY, at 5:15pm, just before the post office closed. And I had to buy bubble wrap while I was there because my mom had run out.

Bex, your ornament should arrive in 2-3 days! Unless the box gets “accidentally” damaged and someone from the USPS takes a liking to it.

We had lunch today with my friend Stephanie—the same Stephanie with whom we went to the zoo after we first moved to California. She happened to be passing through Omaha on her way to spend Christmas with family in central Nebraska, so we arranged to meet for lunch at Wheatfields. It was great to see her, as always.

I splurged and let Annalie get hot cocoa. Boy was I glad I did that, because this was what the waitress brought out to her!

I wish I had gotten a photo of when the waitress first set the cocoa down in front of her. Annalie’s jaw dropped, and she was so happy and excited! I love how kids can really appreciate the simple things. The thoughtful waitress had even added a few ice cubes to the cocoa to cool it down, so Annalie didn’t have to wait to drink it.

The cocoa made up for Annalie’s disappointment that we didn’t get to sit in the sun deck by the fountain, as we usually do. So did the fact that we were sitting next to a gingerbread Dr. Seuss town. Yep, someone recreated Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas in gingerbread, frosting, and candy! I especially love the gumballs (or giant jawbreakers or whatever they are) that were used in various places.

If you look at the biggest size of the second photo you can see a little Grinch towards the bottom, with a Wheatfields restaurant on the right, and a movie theater that’s playing It’s a Wonderful Life. I kind of wanted to take more photos, but everyone was waiting for me. Anyway, as long as the weather cooperates we’ll be going back to Wheatfields on Wednesday for brunch with a bunch of friends. Maybe I’ll get the chance to take more photos then.

This was my alternate 7 Days shot. Scooters is an Omaha-based coffee company that has really good coffee at their many drive-thru locations. Today my mom and I stopped there after lunch for lattes.

Annalie got a GloDoodle at our early family Christmas on Sunday, and she’s been playing with it a lot. Can you tell we miss Troy? We do. Thank goodness we have snow and beloved restaurants and friends and family, especially a sweet new baby, to distract us.

I’ve been feeling pretty indifferent about Christmas this year. I didn’t put our tree up early and write and mail one-third of our Christmas cards already because I’m so filled with Christmas spirit. It’s more like taking out the trash.

Whaaa? you might be asking yourself, How on earth are Christmas decorations and holiday salutations like taking out the trash?

See, when Troy is around, I keep stuffing things into the kitchen trash can because I know that eventually Troy will notice it’s full and cheerfully empty it. When Troy is gone, I’m much more likely to take the trash out as soon as I notice it’s full, because it’s not like Annalie or the cats are gonna do it for me. I’m the only adult here right now, so if a Christmas-related task is going to get accomplished, then I’d better get on it.

Silver wreath ornament purchased from doow‘s etsy shop.

But my heart hasn’t really been in it. This is the first Christmas in 15 years that Troy and I have been apart, and it’s hitting me harder than I expected it to, seasoned Navy wife that I am.

In a way, this whole deployment has been relatively easy. I thought having a child would make Troy being gone much more difficult, and in a way it has, but mostly it’s been much easier than every previous deployment. I’m not living by myself, eating all my meals alone. I have a sidekick this time around, one who misses Troy just as much as I do, and funnily enough that’s made the past few months much more bearable for both of us.

Lately though, it’s been harder. It started with Thanksgiving, and now that I’m looking ahead to Christmas, I’m definitely missing Troy more—not in an I’m-so-empty-without-him, crying-myself-to-sleep kind of way. It’s more like I’m just aware of his absence all the time, and sighing a lot. That’s why I’ve been going through the Advent and Christmas motions, but not really too excited about them.

Today something changed. I think it started when Annalie wrote her very first thank-you note. Well, she’s written dozens of thank-you notes over the years by dictating them to me, and colored many thank-you drawings. This, however, was the very first thank-you note that Annalie wrote entirely with her own hand, only asking me for help with spelling. Then she decided to draw and color a little Christmas tree at the bottom, which made me smile and smile. Annalie usually only draws with one color, despite my occasional suggestions that she make her drawings colorful. The fact that she colored the Christmas tree green and added blue and red and orange ornaments and a yellow star, and then a rainbow-wrapped present underneath the tree made me very happy.

At some point after that I decided I’d better get cracking on some Christmas baking, since that’s going to be a major component of the gifts I give this year. (Spoiler alert! If you expect to get a Christmas gift from us this year and you want it to remain a surprise, you might want to skip the rest of this paragraph.) I made more granola bars and some candied nuts, and I made the pastry dough and cooked the filling for my all-time favorite apricot cookies, and somewhere in there I hung Christmas lights in the kitchen window.

Last Christmas we hung lights on the outside of the house and in the lemon tree. After Christmas we never took them down, which is handy since I wouldn’t have been able to hang all those again by myself. But to me it doesn’t really feel like Christmas unless there are lights in windows in every room of the house. I love turning off all the overhead lights and lamps and plugging in colorful Christmas lights all over the house.

Tonight I hung lights in the kitchen window. I sang along with BNL as they lamented the plight of worker elves. I breathed in the cinnamon scent of the candied nuts cooling on the counter and listened to the apricot filling bubbling on the stove. I thought, “Christmas is coming!” and I was happy about it.

Last week we had a vanilla-making party. The whole thing was Sonja‘s idea, and Brenda, Sue, Heather, Jen and Bonnie all quickly agreed it was a brilliant one.

Plans were made, vanilla beans and bottles and vodka were procured, everyone was looking forward to the party. Yay!

Then something sad happened: Sonja got sick, and she couldn’t make the drive down for the vanilla party. We were all bummed she couldn’t be there, but we decided to go ahead with the vanilla-making. Because it had taken approximately two weeks and 78 emails back and forth between everyone to figure out one day when we were all free, we thought if we postponed the party would likely never happen at all.

If the party had never happened that would have been sadder still, because it was a fun day. Annalie wasn’t interested in making vanilla again (she’s made it before) and Bonnie’s son E preferred to chase the cats and play outside. But the rest of the moms and kids were really into it. Bug and Audrey and M and even 2-year-old Molly all stuffed beans into bottles and took turns pouring vodka from a measuring cup into a funnel.

Bug especially enjoyed holding the beans to her nose and sniffing “the yummy, yummy vanilla!” The rest of us enjoyed her cute vanilla-caviar mustache.

Altogether I think we made more than 60 bottles of vanilla extract that day. Since we bought everything in bulk, each 4-ounce bottle cost less than $2.50, which is about one-third what a similar bottle would have cost at the grocery store.

Even though we started out with 5.25 liters of vodka we ran out before we were done. So I grabbed a bottle of rum that had been languishing in our cupboard and used that for a few bottles of extract. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s much of a difference in taste.

M was quite proud of the fact that she did all these bottles by herself. She was a vanilla-making champ. Molly wandered off at some point and jumped on the futon with a yellow balloon. She is a futon-jumping champ.

And these three transformed into kittens with a few strokes of a washable marker. They spent quite a while crawling around on all fours and meowing.

Brenda did some stealthy crafting while the rest of us finished up the vanilla. She’s had wreaths on the brain for a while now.

Basically, a good time was had by all. Except when we were missing Sonja and Noah, and wishing they were there. Thanks for the idea, though, Sonja…consider yourself permanently invited to any and all parties at my house in the future. Especially on January 10th!

Today, as you might know, was Thanksgiving in the U.S. We had a fabulous feast at our house with Brenda and Toby and Bug, and Brenda’s parents Sue and Tom. It was extremely kind of them to come to our house and share the day with us, distracting us from the fact that we really miss Troy and wish he had been here too. When we counted our blessings today—along with the arrival of my newborn niece, the beautiful weather, the upcoming 3rd season of Chuck, the many times this past week we’ve been able to Skype with Troy—we counted each and every one of our friends who have made this long deployment of Troy’s so much easier to bear. Thanks, you guys! You know who you are. I hope you know how much we love and appreciate you!

I am so thankful for all the amazing people the internet has brought into my life. I am thankful that email and this blog have allowed me to maintain friendships that otherwise might have faded away. In honor of that gratitude, I’m going to give some stuff away! If you comment on this post before December 1st, 2009, you will be entered in a drawing for one of five prizes: three bottles of homemade vanilla extract, this plate, or a $15 gift card to the winner’s choice of Starbucks, Target, or iTunes.

Have a great rest-of-the-weekend, everyone! What are some things you are thankful for?

Comments are now closed. Winners will be selected and announced soon!