It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I absolutely love this time of year.  I love Christmas songs, houses with lights, baking goodies, and spending time with the people I love.  Christmas always touches my heart and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 
I think of my Mom all the time, but at Christmas she is always front and center.  She loved holidays, all holidays.  It made her happy to decorate and entertain, she loved having lots of people over and making way too much food.  She had a way of making Christmas magical and it saddens me that I don't have her touch.  I can't wrap like she wrapped, I can't cook like she cooked, and I definitely can't pick out the perfect gifts like she always could. 
She used to tell me that as great as I thought Christmas was then, as a youngster, it would be even better when I had my own children.  She tried to explain how it feels to watch your babies take in every light, and happily gobble up every treat.  She tried to put into words how much more I would get by giving my kids the perfect gift, than by getting the perfect gift myself.  To be completely honest, I thought she was exaggerating.  I knew love, I thought.  I knew how wonderful it felt to give someone I love a gift.  I was wrong.  I had no idea how great Christmas could be until I had my boys. 
Now that I have my kids, I understand what she meant.  My kids have brought new meaning to the word joy.  It's a weird feeling loving Christmas, and everything that comes with it, and also missing her so much. 
This Tuesday will mark the 9 year anniversary of her death.  That means she was not here on earth for my wedding, or even to meet my husband.  She was not here for the births of my sons, and she will never be here to share a single holiday with us.  I worry that I can't capture who she was for my kids.  I worry that they might not know how much she loved me and how much she would have adored them.  I can't do Christmas like my Mom did, I just don't have it.  I hope that somehow my boys can have some of the Christmas experience that she always made for me.  I am trying.  If I can recreate just a fraction of what she did, I just might make some magic for my babies.  <3