One Week To Go

We are down to the last week before Christmas... 

• The Christmas cards have all been mailed (success!)
• All the presents are wrapped and under the tree.
• Obviously, as you've seen in the photos posted, our apartment looks very festive and Christmassy. The decorations have been nice because Sam has hardly been home this month, and somehow turning on the tree and the lights on our balcony makes the apartment feel less lonely.  
• My wonderful family (and Sam's) has been sending gifts, and I promise they are all under the tree waiting for December 25th.  Sam keeps saying that it looks a little selfish that we have already piled everything up, but again, it somehow makes me feel a little more loved.
• I'm almost finished with my Christmas shopping- only 2 people left on my list!  And I picked up the stocking stuffers last night on my way home from work, so that's done.  
• I bought bacon for Christmas morning breakfast to go with the incredibly Sticky Buns that Scott and Lisa sent us from Williams&Sonoma.  
• I have tried to throw myself into planning and preparing and cleaning to distract me from my loneliness. 

Full disclosure: this has been one of the toughest holiday seasons of my adult life.  (2009 was pretty horrible because Papa Hunter was losing his battle with metastatic prostate cancer, and it definitely takes the cake.) 

1. Sam's schedule has him gone so much that this has been the loneliest holiday season of my life.  In early med school he was around a lot, and by the end of medical school I had lots of friends I celebrated with in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  
2. 2011 will be the first time I don't spend Christmas with my family.  The only other time I haven't spend Christmas Day with my nuclear family was in 2006; my parents and Carina went to Hawaii, and I spent Christmas Day with the Hunter side of my family.  Even then, I was with blood relatives.  

It's so weird to think that none of my family will be celebrating Christmas with me this year, and even stranger to think that I won't be participating in my family's little kookie traditions.  Even typing this I am getting teary-eyed and choked up.  Is this what being an adult is?  Giving up the things you love?  I gotta tell ya, when I said I wanted to be a grown up, this is not what I had in mind.  

Sam asked me last night what I want for Christmas and I didn't have an answer for him.  The things I want for Christmas this year don't fit in boxes with wrapping paper because they're intangible.