It was an evening we’d had on the calendar for weeks.
The night to drink hot chocolate while riding around looking at Christmas lights in surrounding neighborhoods is always a highlight for us this time of the year. We wear our pajamas too.
We’re classy like that.
I’d like to say that the pajama thing is a total nostalgic move but that wouldn’t be completely honest. Truth is, one of our wild children usually passes out before we make it home and I’d rather just carry them in and lay them down without having to change their clothes.
We ate dinner quickly and mapped out our plan. That was when I had my first hint that things might not go off without a hitch as they did last year.
There is a website that lists all homes in our area with the best Christmas lights. Said website had shut down business sometime in the past year.
Not a family to be deterred by such a thing, we set out on this venture with the trusty old iphone map in hand. Not sure where it was taking us, or if it even knew itself, but we had it open nonetheless.
Somewhere less than a mile from our driveway began the beautiful back and forth between my little’s otherwise known as bickering. It went right along with Christmas music, giving it a lovely effect.
There’s a house not far from ours with a giant blowup snowman. That house happens to be where Quinley’s teacher lives. When we told her how much we’d been enjoying the snowman she told us he is twenty feet tall. Tanner insisted he is actually only nineteen feet instead of twenty. He does this sort of thing when he gets tired. It’s lovely.
At one point in their discussion I might have threated to pull over and make them kiss if they didn’t settle things quickly. That was met by tons of giggles. Score!
We drove on down the road diligently searching for a house we had so much enjoyed last year. It had been so amazing that at one point we parked in front of their house along with TEN other cars and just watched in amazement. It was set to music and everything was synchronized. It was just awesome.
When trusty old iphone left us wondering we stopped and asked a gentleman walking down the sidewalk if he could point us in the right direction of the house that had been known to stop traffic.
He smiled, pointed toward a direction and said, “its right down that way but they moved this year.”
He was such a kind soul and we talked to him for a while before we drove on.
I looked over at my man and asked if he was disappointed. Because clearly this wasn’t going as it had in years past. He shook his head and I could tell that he was honestly not disappointed at all.
What makes Christmas memories special isn’t whether or not things go as planned. If you can check that you saw twenty fabulous light displays along the way but haven’t laughed and enjoyed yourself then what good did it do at all?
If there hadn’t been the argument over whether the giant snowman was indeed twenty feet instead of nineteen I would have missed getting to hear my kid’s belly laugh at the suggestion that they kiss each other to settle the issue.
If the amazing house last year still had its previous owner, true we would have seen some awesome Christmas lights, but we would have missed talking to that nice gentleman taking a walk.
Sometimes the best memories are made when plans are changed and things don’t work out the way we think they should have.
That’s what Christmas is really all about. When we learn to change our plans long enough to see Christ in everything, we’ve truly learned about the greatest gift of all
He is here with us. He lives among us and in us.
And I don’t want to be so focused on the destination during this season that I miss Him along the way.
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