Advent Memories Day 1 : Where Was I?

I decided that instead of an advent calendar, I’m going to count the 25 days to Christmas down by going down memory lane. Hopefully, I can pull off one Christmas memory for every day.

Let’s just start with the basics. Christmas through the years…where was I?

Texas! I’ve spent the far majority of my Christmases in Dallas. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I spent Christmas anywhere else. We lived in Dallas for my first few and once we moved to Missouri, we would make the road trip back for a week or two over the Holidays. My parents were really the first in either of their families to move away from Texas so all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and beyond were in Dallas all those years. We had plenty of people there to visit and celebrate Christmas with.  Once my sister started college, we started doing Missouri Christmases because she (and later I, too) needed a break at home during that time. And at that time, Missouri was home to us. After I graduated from college, things get a little fuzzy. My parents were in California at that time and we spent some (2-4) of those seven Christmases in Cali and some in Texas…I can’t remember how many in each place though. There was also one Christmas during that time period that we spent skiing in Monarch, Colorado with our extended family on my dad’s side. Since the time my parents moved from Cali and back to Texas in 2005, we’ve spent every Christmas in Dallas. We’ll be back there this year. So out of 34 Christmases (1976-2009), I’ve spent 22-24 of them in Texas, 7 in Missouri, 2-4 in California, and 1 in Colorado.

I’m hoping for Hawaii in 2011 :) Beth & I are discussing and need to pull mom and dad in the loop (Nicole…you want to start discussions amongst the CanStonIs crowd)?