ho-o-tel, ho-tel, HO-O-tel, hotel

I'm sure you are asking yourself right now, WHY is this crazy woman updating her blog on Christmas Eve?!?

Well... it's because I'm realizing that so much of a big, huge, wonderful holiday like Christmas is wrapped up in expectations, traditions, memories, doing things the way they SHOULD be done, while surrounded by the people you love, smelling the scents that bring back wonderful warm thoughts...

And, well, a Super 8 with the faint scent of smoke after spending the day in a nursing home doesn't exactly fit into that mold. But, then again, sometimes you need a wake-up call to remember what really matters.

Just to make ourselves feel better, our 8-year-old came up with the ingenious idea to make up a song to describe our journey the past two days. So far, we've come up with a few ideas:

(To the tune of NOEL)
Ho-o-tel, ho-tel, Ho-o-tel, hotel. Warm is the room in our Super 8 hotel.

Here are some other elements of our story. Maybe you can help us think of a more creative song:

My 95-year-old grandma has been really sick and finally had to go to the hospital. After a few days there, she needed to be moved from her apartment into a nursing home. That happened today.

This all caused my parents to scrap their plans to travel to visit my brother for Christmas. This, of course, was a let-down for my brother and his daughters, who were hoping to host visitors. And not exactly the dreamed-of Christmas for my parents.

MY family moved Christmas up to Tuesday and actually -- get ready -- opened our gifts in the evening, instead of the morning. Gasp! Wail! Moan!! NOOOO!!! (Getting up early on Christmas morning is my MOST LOVED tradition!!)

But it had to be done so we could get on the road this morning. After a four-hour drive, we were able to visit Grandma in the nursing home and then have dinner with my exhausted parents who have been moving furniture and handling medical issues the past few days. They live 45 minutes away so we ate in my grandma's now-vacant apartment.

So, the countdown to Christmas resulted in this. Christmas Eve at the Super 8.

And that's OK. Because it could be much, much worse. And we're making memories this year of a different kind. And we're together. And we're singing funny songs.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!