Funny how this week's theme has to do with tradition as I had just written a post for last week regarding tradition. I guess it's good that this is the them, because, in good old Ciara fashion, I forgot some things. You can check out last week's Fatherhood Friday under this post for I guess what is kind of Part I of traditions theme.
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Up until my son was about a year old (I still lived with my parents and was a single mom), my parents always had a real tree. I remember the family always heading out and picking out a tree. I say family, but in reality it was my mom who picked it out.
I don't know if she got tired of having to keep up the real tree or what, but the year she decided to buy a fake one was a bit of a surprise. She had always preferred a fresh tree.
When I was with my ex, we had a fake tree from day one. My ex probably didn't care one way or the other about the whole real vs. fake deal, mainly because he saw Christmas as a commercial holiday. He hated that. Anyways, our first tree was a little one. It was cheap. It served its purpose I guess. The second and last one we had was probably about 6 feet tall. It was definitely a step up from the first one.
My current husband, Stinky, had always had a real tree. I remember the first Christmas we had after we got married. He 'postponed' Christmas for us. We had gotten married in November, but I had to go to court to move out of state and moved during the kids' Christmas break.
Stinky and Showboat had come to Vegas to help us move everything(on Christmas Day 2004). On the way to our 'new' home, we stopped at my mom and dad's house (they lived 3 hrs from 'new' home at the time). We were there to do a couple of things. First, bring some things to their house and second, to leave my oldest, my son, there to live with my parents. My son had decided he would try living with them for awhile. Anyways, when we left the next day, it took us several hours (like 6 instead of 3) to get 'home' thanks to the U-Haul truck from hell. I think my son and I almost passed out at one point due to being behind the truck and it's fumes. When we arrived, my husband wanted to go in and turn on the Christmas tree lights and have everything ready for us. Inside were our presents under the REAL tree. (It had been a long time since I had one of those.) There were three bikes and a few wrapped presents. At first I didn't realize that the biggest bike was for me. I thought it was Showboat's. lol My girls were very excited. They got cozy Christmas pajamas and a jacket. Stinky had given them their other present before we left Vegas so they could use them in the truck...Nintendo Gameboy Advance. My other gifts were couple things to pamper myself: a skin care kit and a gift certificate for a massage.
It was tough for me that Christmas, simply because I was moving to a new place with basically no friends and no family super close. I had also just left my son behind with my parents. I cried a lot the day I left him there. I was basically living in a new world: a world of the unknown. But for just this one day, when Stinky made Christmas for us, I didn't think about all the other stuff.
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Please check out all the other great mom and dads' Fatherhood Fridays at Dad Blogs for their tradition or other Fatherhood Friday related posts. Just click on the badge in this post. :0)
