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So as is my life and the way my brain works...when I should have been drifting off to sleep last night my brain went into full thinking mode and I started thinking about Christmas this year, the past 3 years and Christmas before Scott.  I thought about all the traditions we have done since I was kid, the ones we started as a our own family, and the ones that were started in the past  4 years.  I started thinking how this will have been Scott's 5th Christmas.  How we have went from not wanted to celebrate at all that first Christmas to having new traditions that include Scott.  I started thinking how we now have our special ornaments on our tree. How C still gets to pick out a Christmas gift every year for his brother and we donate it to Toys for Tot.  How we make a little tree every year with ornaments C makes and take it as a family to his grave.  New traditions, traditions I wish we never had to start.  More of taking a really crappy situation and making it as positive and joyful as we can.  Scott isn't here.  He will never spend a Christmas with us.  He will never be at Christmas Eve dinner learning about his Polish heritage with his extended family.  He will never wake us up Christmas morning to run downstairs to open presents from Santa.  I will never have to referee who gets to open what first.  That first Christmas all I thought about were the could haves, should haves.  It just made us sadder, angrier.  It made us be so on edge that my husband and I both snapped at some point during the day it all being too much.  We slowly started letting the should haves go...slowly allowed ourselves to realize being angry, being sad wasn't going to make things better, make the holidays better.  We started forming these new traditions.  These traditions started so that Scott can be with us in some way.  Does it mean we still aren't sad?  NO.  Does it me we still aren't angry? NO.  It's acceptance and moving on and realizing we have to make the best of our situation and find that little bit of good.  So this year our special ornaments hang on our tree.  Scott's Christmas tree has been placed on his grave.   Toys have been bought and donated to Toys for Tots.  These things bring us closer to together as a family.  Allows us to be a family of 4.  Allows us to do to some good for others.  It teaches C that sometimes you have to take something really bad and turn it around to be something you can live with instead of allowing it to eat you up and leave you a shell of who you were.  I started doing these things mainly for C.  But now I do them for me as well and my family.   To everyone on Share I hope you have the best Holiday you can and able to find new traditions of your own, new ways to make the holidays mean something meaningful to you and your family.