Holiday Traditions, No more

For the past 11 years, the day after Thanksgiving my husband and I have gone out and bought our Christmas tree. Forget about Black Friday, for us it's all about green & red! We decorate while playing cheezy Christmas music or, since the kids have joined us, watching Rudolph or Frosty. This has been our tradition every year since we met.

But this year we are retail store owners and it's Black Friday. And we're still open Saturday and Sunday too. Then Monday the kids are back in school. They asked today, "Are we going to get our Christmas tree and decorate?!"

It's hard to tell them "No." Today they'll spend 8 hours with a babysitter while Papa and I work at the store. Tomorrow they'll go without me to get the tree and then I'll likely decorate with the kids while Papa works.

I'm thrilled that we have a business that we love and we're working hard to get it off the ground so that we stay in business. But my heart hangs heavy today knowing things are so different this year. This is normally a family weekend spend celebrating and decorating and laughing and building new, beautiful memories.

I'm thankful for the wonderful day we shared together yesterday. I can only hope that next year we have an employee we trust enough to run the show for us so that we may resume our family holiday tradition.