Diane Again: Happy Second Day Of Christmas

"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

- John Lennon

The casual observer may not notice anything particularly interesting or noteworthy about this evening's table setting for our Second Day celebration. But the truth is that today marked a very special and long-overdue milestone in the history of the Streicher holiday table.

^ See those red Christmas plates? They date back to the very earliest days of our family, the first year of our marriage. Our daughters were just a dream in those days, but already my head was full of ideas about how we would play out our years together. And in a fine example of my overwhelming fondness for details, I imagined sitting down to many a Christmas dinner eaten upon these plates.

Just one small hitch in that fantasy. Already I was hoping for a family larger than four, but dang, those plates were expensive and at the time, a purchase of four plates was all our budget could handle.

No matter, I told myself, there's plenty of time to buy more. As the family grows, I'll buy more plates and my babies will sit at them just like so many adorable little Cindy Lou Whos at the roast beast feast of the Grinch.

A perfectly reasonable plan. But we all know what happens to our plans when life kicks into gear.

Fast forward to last week. Sorting through my holiday dishes, I realized with a familiar pang of disappointment and regret that now - many, many years after my family expanded to five and then six members - I still have just four Christmas dinner plates.

And you know, after all those years of patience and budgeting and setting other priorities, something inside of me just snapped.

Without another thought, I marched my little self straight to the computer and ordered two more plates.

No questions asked, no excuses tendered.

I have to admit, they cost a little more than I was comfortable paying but come on. Dreams matter, and I have waited a good long time for this one to come true.

My plates showed up today.

The UPS man was still walking back to his truck as I ripped open the box, pulled out the plates and washed them clean.

No matter that my third-born resides in Vietnam at the moment - I prepared a place setting for each member of my family.

Six shining red Christmas dinner plates, trees adjusted perfectly, sat on my table.

My dream has finally come true.

We broke them in tonight by eating our traditional Second Day of Christmas meal of Mexican-style enchiladas. The four original plates match exactly with the two new ones - I can't tell them apart and already they have blended together as a perfect set of six. If I didn't know better, I'd think they had been together all this time.

So even though I'm a few decades off my anticipated timeline, I think that the story of my Christmas dinner plates definitely worked out happily ever after.