It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!!

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!!

I am so freaking excited. It's snowing out right now, beautiful flakes falling purposefully towards the ground, undisturbed by any wind. The beautiful night makes me think of The Snowman, a movie that absolutely enchanted me when I was a kid.

Why am I so delighted? There are two main reasons:

1.) I love, love, love everything about Christmas
2.) Really, if the weather is going to be as cold and nasty as it has been the past three weeks, I'd like there to be snow on the ground. Thank you.

So I'm sitting here at my desk, only a little tired from my weekend, listening to "Christmas with the Academy" and thinking of all my Christmases. I love the smells of Christmas, the smell of the fresh, clean snow, the sharp, invigorating scent of pine, the amazingly warm smell of Christmas baking. I love going to church on Christmas Eve. And being surrounded by the people I love, walking stocking-footed across the hardwood floors in the living-room, warmed by the fire in the wood-stove, lying on the floor and looking up through the branhes of the Christmas tree, the only light in the dark room.

Mmmm. I love love love the Christmas season. This is the last one that I'll have to "miss" in college -- finals finish on the 22nd of December, so there's hardly time to get home and enjoy everything about Christmas before it's over. Next year, John and I will be driving back home through the snow, to our parents' houses, dividing our Christmas again, Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with his.

And then in only a few years, we'll get to make that drive with our own child in the backseat of the car. Just that thought makes the breath catch in my chest...the idea of our child, the one with my hair and jb's ears, his eyes and my mouth, sitting in the backseat...and getting to watch as he experiences all the things we love about Christmas. I can picture him, through the ages, as we make the drive back to our parents' homes. The image my heart is stuck on, though, is when he's three or four. My heart aches, sometimes, with how badly I want to have this child.

I am so eager, so excited, so very ready. And although the sensible side of me knows that it's good planning for us to wait a few years, there's a part of me that doesn't care about that, that is consumed with the idea of our child, our baby, our dna and blood...our love and our heart, walking around outside our body.

And I can hardly wait.