My baby boy,

I didn’t eat pork and sauerkraut this year on New Year’s Day. It’s been a tradition of mine and I had the ingredients necessary to make it, but I just didn’t.

I’m so glad the holidays are all over and it’s all completely behind us. Before the days, I feel like I am just anxiously awaiting the days to come. Once they are here, I want the holiday to go as fast as possible so I don’t have to dwell on the fact that you’re not there. It sounds terrible, since I’m still a mom with three kids in the house, but I did what I could during the time. In a perfect world, we would have done a lot more things that were holiday related like going to Kennywood, driving around more to look at lights, building the Oreo cookie house kits that I bought back in November, but that doesn’t seem to be the reality of our life. I am disappointed and sometimes feel a small twinge of guilt about it, but we are still surviving.

Elijah made yet another comment tonight about how he has to take a bath more now that you’re gone. According to him, when you were here with us he only had to take a bath every five days. I just laughed at him. Since you and your overly sweaty self had to take a bath every day, I guess him sometimes only having to take a bath every other day seemed much longer.

Tomorrow is daddy’s last day before he goes back to Hawaii, I’m not sure what our plans are yet. Lucas is going to struggle the most when he leaves, but this will be the last “long stretch” they have to go since he will be moving to Maryland in the summer. Once he’s closer, hopefully they will get to see him more and things will be a little easier on them.

I love you more than anything, baby boy. Good night and sweet dreams.