holidays.

Still in limbo, still living out of suitcases. Now commuting to Seattle from Bothell. But the long bus ride is alright - as long as we can catch the double decker commuter bus (bonus points if we snag the front row of the top level! we behave like children when this happens). As our time in Washington keeps getting extended, we're faced with the possibility of still being around for...

THE HOLIDAYS.

It can be pretty tough to decide which family to spend holidays with. Many people can probably relate on some level. 24 hours and three meals is not enough to divide a holiday equally and/or in a way that satisfies everyone, and feelings can get hurt. Things get complicated when people have babies, become terminally ill, visit from faraway lands... or when they get married, and the number of households can multiply. We understand that it's a tremendous blessing to have so many different loving families to divide special occasions with, but it still can be a stressful time. For the past five years, I've had to spend the holidays away from my own family due to the joys of working at a tourist trap open year-round. This has eliminated us from having to choose between visiting Ben's families and mine - however, it's been such a bummer because it would be really nice to have Christmas morning with my mom, dad and brother again someday.

Part of the struggle of deciding where to spend holidays is because Ben and I would theoretically love to spend every holiday with every family of ours. If possible, we would temporarily clone ourselves in order to make this happen. But this is unfeasible. And it seems highly dangerous, because cloning usually leads to zombie warfare. So, we're faced with the dilemma of attempting to balance our own wants and needs, with the wants and needs of our various loved ones. 

Unless we move soon, in which case the only balancing we'll need to do will be at yoga class.

As I've addressed in our previous post, Ben and I are now a family together, and part of why we decided to move during our first year of marriage is because we would like to establish this. We want to begin making our own family holiday traditions, choosing which ones to celebrate and which ones to perhaps retire. For example, I have never been a huge fan of American Thanksgiving, for many reasons (too close to Christmas! travel is horrendous! I don't like turkey! and also the events of which the celebration is inspired by). So, we're thinking we won't make Thanksgiving a big deal in our new family. We've also discussed starting some new family traditions for Chinese holidays, such as the Lunar New Year and the Autumn Moon Festival. After all, our biological children will ethnically be half-Chinese, and it would be fun to raise them with a sense of "cultural awareness," before they become surly teenagers who want nothing to do with anything awesome.

Anyway. Maybe we'll be gone by the time the winter holidays roll around. 

Part of me hopes we will, so we can spend our first married holiday season starting our own traditions, and so we don't have to make tough choices regarding time spent with family.

Because really... it was stressful enough having to decide who we got to spend Halloween with.

CK