Candlelit

So there is a completed bypass at Lake of the Ozarks. It's amazing. Between that and the completed bypass of Kirksville, my trip home now only takes 5 hours rather than the 6 that it used to take me to get home. I arrived in Jeff City in two hours and freaked out. What?! It's only 1 o'clock!?!

A-mazing.

I'm really glad that the Prius is so comfortable to drive for long trips.

Missing Nathan.... trying not to think about it, but... it's hard. He's supposed to be here. Holding my hand during the Christmas Eve service and raising his eyebrows and smiling at me when I look at him. With lots of overly enthusiastic excitement about the holidays (only some of it faked.)

When we started dating the first time, it happened at my house over Christmas break. We'd been hemming and hawing around- not actually committing to a relationship but understanding that we liked each other as more than just friends... and then I came home for the Christmas season, and he went to his house, but went back after Christmas to work the front desk. And I was still here... and we were talking on IM one night and he said he missed me and I said, "Well, come visit me!" And he did. He and two of our other friends just up and decided to visit me and arrived the next day. It was so spontaneous and fun... that night after watching a movie upstairs I went  downstairs to grab some snacks and he came downstairs to "help." (Aka watch me make him a sandwich.) And there in my kitchen we talked and decided to make Renathan official.

He always was kinda into grand gestures.

Couldn't just wait the four days for me to get back to Springfield.

Of course a month later he broke up with me... but obviously that didn't take for long. :)

I thought I'd gone to my last Christmas Eve service alone.

Candles have a strange way of making everyone extra pretty... and me extra lonely and the grief extra hard.