There is no doubt that our house comes alive for the holidays.
This is due in large part to my wife.
In turn, she has instilled this love for the holidays in our girls. For me, it’s just wonderful to watch. This is a big change for me because I have always sort of dreaded the holidays. I came up in a house where my mom was the parent and my dad lived a couple of states away. In my experience, the holidays was one of the worst things about divorce. That and the fact that my mom sets the thermostat to like subtropical during the winter. The gas furnace just blasts away all day and all night. I literally would be sweating just sitting there in my mom’s house. My humbug for Christmas really just kept going until I met my wife. She is the type who is the very embodiment of holiday magic. And the way she is with our girls as they decorate and cook goodies is the best thing I can even imagine for Christmas. A big thing for my wife is lighting the house up with candles from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. It’s just what she does. So that means that I buy a case of HVAC air filters just before turkey day. And I go through those air filters. That’s due to all the candles. The first Christmas we spent together, I almost choked out the heat pump. All that candle wax that gets burnt goes somewhere. It goes right on the HVAC air filter. It was so bad that first Christmas that the air filter was completely glazed over.