Baby's first Christmas

So this was my first Christmas away from my family in, well, forever. I've always been home. We have a very predictable set of traditions: on Christmas eve, we eat dinner, go to church, open gifts, eat cookies and have a birthday cake for Jesus. Then, on Christmas, we open stocking, go over to our grandparents, eat the most magical meal ever, and open gifts with them. It's familiar and warm and wonderful and not stressful and the best. Oh! And most importantly, it's always cold for Christmas! I mean, maybe not so much this year, but on Christmas's past, you could find me curled up on my favorite chair with my dog, a book, and some tea.

Not this year. This year, I was sweaty and stressed and sad. I ate about 27 cookies by myself in the span of 5 days. I cried lots and wrote a really terribly rhymed poem to send to some friends and spent lots of time watching Monk. And it wasn't even cold. Nothing about the season felt like Christmas.

On Christmas eve, I had to go to immigration and extend my visa. After a series of unfortunate events, including grabbing my roommates passport instead of mine, I was approved for the extension to stay in Thailand but still have to return on Monday for the official signature. Upon returning home, I proceeded to have a mental breakdown and spend the evening crying alone.

On Christmas morning, I woke up to make breakfast for everyone, which is noteworthy because it was my first time cooking a meal for a large group and I'd been busily preparing all week. I bought all the ingredients, ground the coffee, checked the cooking time and oven temperatures to gage when I should start. Half of the frittatas were baking when I went to cut the bread for french toast. However, an army of ants had set up camp in the three loaves of bread I left in the cabinet. Fighting off the urge to cry and order McDonald's, I woke my lovely, lifesaving roommate up and asked her to go to the store for me to buy the ingredients for my Grandma's famous coffee cake.

She returned with butter and bacon and the plan was back in action. The frittatas were beautiful and soon, the kitchen filled with the smells of sweet cinnamon as the coffee cake baked. At 10o'clock we sat down to eat! As a friend cut into the frittatas and I sliced up the coffee cake, we discovered that the middle of the dishes were uncooked. After all the planning that went into this breakfast, we still had to wait another hour until everything was done and cooked through! While I learned a valuable lesson to check the middle of dishes to make sure they're cooked through, I'm thankful for my gracious, patient friends.

Christmas was weird so say the least. It was sad and hard and produced a lot of tears. But it was also one for the books. Despite not being with my family, I still felt loved and laughed a lot and danced to Justin Bieber. Everything turned out okay and every one survived. And regardless of where it's celebrated, Christmas is a reminder of Jesus anyways and his birth was certainly not perfect and his parents were far from their home too so I guess the Christmas story takes on a whole new meaning for me. Merry Christmas everyone.