Since the holiday season has arrived and is in full swing, it has made me contemplate just how much time I have left with my family, as well as all of the moments I am going to miss out on during the holiday season once I go to college. Granted, I won’t miss everything, I will come to Thanksgiving dinner and celebrate Christmas day; but, I will miss the small things that happen in between big celebrations.

I will no longer get dance around to Christmas music while decorating the Christmas tree. There will be no more helping my dad pick out the perfect gift for my mom, and getting to be in on the secret, or knowing exactly what to get my sister because I see her everyday. All of these things I have taken for granted all these years are finally coming to a screeching halt, and I don’t know how to feel about it.

Of course, I am excited for the future and all the new experiences I will have surrounding the holidays, but I am really going to miss all of the family time that fits in between each holiday.

It didn’t really hit me that this was the final holiday season that I would be spending completely at home until Thanksgiving rolled around. I was lucky enough to go to Disney World with my family over Thanksgiving. At one point on the trip, my sister and I may or may not have been bickering, and my dad told us that this might be the last time we would be spending this much time together over the holiday season for a really long time. After that moment I couldn’t get it out of my head. I remember sitting on the plane, flying back to snowy Nebraska, thinking about how much fun I had, and wondering when the next time I would have that much fun with my family again.

Senior year is already chalked full of lasts, and I didn’t even think that this would be one of them. I always assumed that I would have the holidays with my family, no matter where life took me. Now, however, I see that the holiday season is made up of so much more than Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas day. It is full of small moments that go almost unnoticed, until they are no longer part of your life.