A Christmas to Remember!!

Some of my brotha's sporting their new beards just in time for the holiday season at our church party in early December

Izzy getting her gift from Santa at "Christmas in the basement"...as my kiddies like to call it

Well, this had definitely been a Christmas like no other!! Some things were super awesome, some were super difficult and some were just super nasty!

First of all, my talented daughter published her first children's book and celebrated it by having a book signing at the local library where she sold 70 books in an hour!!! We are so thrilled for her :)


We've had some wonderful family Christmas celebrations and have been sure to make time to visit the Grandma's in our life (all adopted here in town)...so those were wonderful memories that I will always cherish.



Christmas was much different for me this year as I spent Christmas Eve-Boxing day supporting one of my clients and attending a birth...kinda shook things up! I did manage to squeeze in my family dinner on Christmas day before I was off to the hospital. The traffic was brutal on the 1 1/2 hour drive, but the weather was just fine, so that was a real blessing. It was also really nice to be in the hospital on such a quiet night...so strange and wonderful! So after getting home at 5 a.m. on Boxing day I slept until 11 a.m. and then headed back to Hanover to join the family for a little more time together.

So strange to me that I've attended so many births on major holidays! Of the 33 births that I have attended so far, I have attended births on labour day (my very first birth ever), Thanksgiving day, Halloween day, Christmas/Boxing day, 2 on New Years Eve/New Years Day last year, my anniversary in January and Valentines day!! That's 8 out of 33 births that have happened on big celebration days. That's one of the difficult parts of this job...you just can't plan for births and when that phone rings you've got to go, whether you feel like it or not and despite what events you may miss out on (I also missed all my parent/teacher interviews last December). I'm not writing about this to complain, but I find it so strange how births tend to happen on important days!! We'll see whether or not I get to stay for the New Years party this year or not (isn't looking good considering tomorrow is also a FULL MOON!). ;)

Then this week I managed to spin my van out and ditch it...not fun, not fun at all. We had been planning on heading back to Hanover to spend some time with the folks and to see the torch coming through, but we never did make it, since I was pretty shaken up and the weather continued to be brutal on Monday.

It has been an emotional week for me! I feel like I really missed out on Christmas this year, but I am so happy that i was able to attend that birth, I truly was!! It has taken me a while to try to come down from all these events of the last week, it's been pretty overwhelming, but things are starting to normalize again...just in time for my pager to go off again, I'm sure!! This job truly teaches me so very much!! Like how I love to control my schedule and my life and how I just can't count on that at all and I need to surrender to His timing for things. Father continue to give me the patience to learn these lessons and the strength to live out your love, even in the difficult moments.

Much Love,

Mel