My first Christmas...

This is my first Christmas...without my family. I think it is just now hitting me. I am flooded with memories of family traditions we use to have, before my parents split. It's hard not to think about those traditions and be sad that they will never happen again, until I start my own family, in which I have full intention on bringing them back. Although my parents have been split for over 4 years. Since that time I have spent Christmas with at least one family member and it has filled the void of not having the traditions. Christmas Eve consisted of a fondue meal. Everyone would participate in preparing the food. Cheese, Meats, and the best of all Chocolate. Afterward we would all open one Christmas present to enjoy the night before Christmas. In the morning, I as always would be the first one to wake up. And even though I was 22 and did not believe in Santa, my parents would still wait until my brother and I went to sleep to put the presents under the tree. My excitement at 22 was the same as if I was 7 years old believing Santa came and brought me all those presents. I'd go to my parents bedroom and wake them up, but after 22 years I learned my lesson and came to their bedroom with a nice hot cup of coffee, made to order :). We would spend the morning opening gifts for eachother, then dad would make his famous homemade apple pecan pancakes and afterward we would open our stockings (the best part). Each stocking would have a can of silly string in them, and once the last person was finished, there was a full blown silly string fight. This would end in a laughing mess. The rest of the day was spent enjoying eachother and our gifts. Then for dinner was my moms homemade lasagna, which is still the best lasagna I have ever tasted, and so says everyone else who has tried it. This will be my 4th Christmas without these traditions, and it hurts and anyone who has had a familiar family experience knows the feeling. Although, I am saddened, I am profoundly grateful that I had a family for 22 years that did this every Christmas, I know there are many who have never had a Christmas like mine. I am also grateful that I have beautiful friends to spend Christmas with this year and another year to celebrate my Savior.

Hold your family tight. Enjoy the dysfunction, that some may call family, you never know when you might lose it.

I hope you all have a beautiful Christmas...

TotalFinder

I haven't written in a while, however I will be writing a few things this coming week. Their are a few things that I have come to support and the first one I would like to share is "TotalFinder". One of my lab assistants brought this program to my attention and I would like to share it with all of you. You can find out all the information at the website: http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ Below is a picture of what Total Finder would look like on your desktop. It allows you to have multiple tabs open at one time. Total finder is useful if you are wanting to easily move files as well as it has a copy and paste button written inside the program so you can make multiples of one file with just a click of a button. This has become a favorite addition to my desktop. I couldn't imagine having a mac without it.