Last year a couple months before Christmas, Dh left on one of those last minute gotta-run-babe-not-sure-when-I’ll-be-back-love-you deployments. As Christmas came, we had settled into a routine.  And while I had made some purposeful plans for the kids so we wouldn’t sit on our butt and feel sorry for ourselves (volunteering for Santa’s Anonymous, Food Bank drives, etc), as the day approached none of us were in the mood. Then on the 23rd my 12 year old crawled into bed with me in the early morning and said “I don’t feel like having a Christmas where we pretend it’s okay Dad isn’t here.” I thought about that a long time.  This wasn’t the kid’s first deployment by a long shot, they knew how it worked.  I couldn’t make Dad appear, the hard truth he was a world away and we could pray our hearts out but there would be no Christmas surprises with him under the tree.  He wouldn’t be there.  But did that mean we had to have a crappy Christmas?  Were we obligated to have less of a day because he wasn’t there? It was then I realized that we had options.  In fact, there were things that we could do BECAUSE Dh wasn’t with us.  Not just what we could do ‘still’ but what we could do INSTEAD.  Dh isn’t a fan of big cities or crowds, so while I’d always wanted to go to NYC, he wasn’t so keen. New York City also terrifies me.  So there’s that.  I mean…