wrap it up

Last night while I waited for my Skype date with Lee I wrapped all the gifts I purchased on my shopping trip last weekend. Since I swore to spill my guts to you during this deployment, I have to admit that wrapping those gifts was hard on me emotionally.
On Christmas Eve my family gathers at my parent's house for dinner and a game of Dirty Santa. Then 17 immediate family members (and all their gifts) go to my aunt and uncle's house to spend the night. On Christmas morning we all wake up and the living room becomes a wrapping paper mountain of fun while we open all of our gifts. Afterwards the yummiest breakfast is shared and we all talk about how we shouldn't have eaten that much...Lee, Cooper and I then jump into the car to road trip 4.5 hours North to his family's home for Christmas where we eat dinner, open gifts and play a game of Dirty Santa. His mama usually makes us margaritas or rum with coke and a lime for accessories while we play a board game together after Dirty Santa. I LOVE tradition and simply getting the Christmas stuff out last night to wrap gifts made me sad to think that my favorite accessory will be missing from the all holiday festivities this year.

And then Lee's Skype call came across my lap top screen and I instantly felt 20 times better.

And after seeing a picture of him with all kinds of boxes NOT FROM ME but from friends and family-I felt all kinds of warm fuzzies that made me grin from ear to ear. I'm incredibly humbled and constantly encouraged by our friends and family's random acts of kindness. They are all nothing less than amazing.