Christmas in July 2019 - Day Thirty

Here we are, almost to the end of this year's Christmas in July!  Where did the month go?  Today's topic is Memories of Christmases Past, A Walk Down Memory Lane.

When my fellow Christmas-loving pal, Miss JoDee (not to be confused with my BFF Jodie) and I put our heads together to come up with the themes for this year, we decided on four weekly main topics with sub-topics each day.  That left the last four days of the month - July 28, 29, 30, and 31.  I came up with completely random ideas which you have been reading here - ABCs, favorite ornament, and memories of Christmases Past and the final post, the wrap-up.

I came up with today's topic based on what will be in my 2018 December Daily album (it's still a work in progress).  Ali Edwards, the memory-keeping guru, suggests that you start your album with the reason why, goals, or intentions for the month of December and the holiday season.  I decided that, since this wasn't going to be a traditional family Christmas by any means (read on, you'll see what I mean), my album would be a memory album of the last 25 Christmases.  2018 was Sophia's 25th Christmas so it seemed like it was meant to be.

My reason why goes like this:

Ali Edwards' welcome message really resonated with me - "my wish for you this season is that you may be open to the smallest moments of joy and that you are able to use this project as a way to create joy within your own life." 

This is a Christmas like no other - Sophia, Vic and I are in three different locations.  We will not be together until December 23.  I have almost no Christmas decorations due to the move to a temporary apartment and the lack of space in the car in which we brought the necessary household goods.  Vic and Sophia are not available for us to have enjoy all of our usual holiday craft fairs, movies, concerts, and other special events.  The budget is tight due to the move and our upcoming plans to buy a house.  It is a holiday season in which I need to find another avenue to experience the magic.  Welcome to 25 years of Christmas memories.

I won't list all of the 25 years of memories here because I hope to share my completed album, in photos or in a video if I can master that skill, once it's done.  Here are just a few of the photos that will feature in the album.

1994 - Sophia's first Christmas - this family photo was taken in October when Vic was home on leave - he spent Christmas at his new duty station in Florida while Sophia and I were still in Saipan.  She's so cute but my hairstyle makes me look matronly and Vic's wearing his ribbons the wrong way around (got to give him a break, he'd only been in the Navy for three months!) - things like this make us chuckle 25 years later.

Although Sophia went through a brief phase when she wanted nothing to do with the portrait studio, she came around and we loved going to J C Penney for Christmas photos - this is 1998, our last Christmas in Florida.

2003 was a very tough Christmas - we lost Mum in July and when we brought the decorations into the small apartment we had rented in Virginia Beach, it was just more than I could handle - everything brought up a memory of Mum.  Things were very subdued that year. 

In 2008 we were living in Rhode Island and flew to Oregon to spend Christmas with my sister and her family and with Dad who had moved in with them earlier that year.  Here we are on the annual Target shopping trip.  The whole holiday was wonderful; we trekked into the wilderness like the Griswold Family for a tree, ate lots of yummy food, played games, had a slideshow with old family photos, the boys knocked over the decorated tree and survived, and it was wonderful to be together as a family.  It ended up being Dad's last Christmas as he died in February 2009.  

Christmas 2013 was our second Christmas of our second time in Virginia - Sophia graduated from high school in June, moved to Oregon to go to college and then decided she didn't want to be so far away so she came back, and then Vic got word that we would be going to Washington next so she enrolled in the local community college and looked ahead to colleges in Washington.  Cute photo of the two of them, was photo-bombing a term back in 2013?

And that brings us to 2018 - Christmas in Sophia's apartment in Washington.  We lost MudLynn in the summer but Spectra had come along to join the family.  We packed a lot of fun into the few days that we had together before Sophia went back to her studies, I went back to work, and Vic flew back to Virginia.