Big. Or small?

BIG. This word describes so many things in my life. My student loans. My graduate textbooks. My butt. My feet. My credit card bill. My mouth. Even my teeth. Someone once told me that I had big teeth. I wasn't sure if  it was meant to be a compliment or not. Sometimes I wish that my life would revolve more around the small things. A smile, a piece of good chocolate, laughter, hugs from the kids, a phone call from a friend...what is horrifying is that I am even considering these to BE the small things.

Tonight the family played a few rounds of UNO Attack. I remember playing card games with my parents and my grandparents when I was a child. I used to love it..my gosh, right now I can almost smell a fried spam sandwich with mustard on white bread - it was what we would always eat on Sunday nights when we would go to visit. You see, a small thing that left a BIG impact on me.

It is my only hope that my kids will hold the same great memories when they are grown. I'm not exactly doing things 'by the book' here - by living four hours away from kids' closest 'Grammie and Grampa' (the other grandparents live even farther away!). I grew up seeing my grandparents weekly, and mine are growing up seeing theirs, well, as much as possible..which sometimes doesn't feel like it's good enough. It's especially difficult during the holidays, when we (most usually due to my work schedule) tend to celebrate together 'around' the holiday rather than ON the holiday. I'm usually feeling like a discombobulated mess. Tired, cranky, and stressed out from buying and wrapping each and every gift, working, and finishing the current school term (for God's sake, I didn't even get a Christmas card out this year)..What scares me the most are my feelings of inadequacy when it comes to the development of any type of yearly family traditions.

My wish this Christmas is that the 'small' things will leave a BIG impact on my kiddos, and that perhaps I could find it within myself to see the greatness of the small things in my own life, too.