Empty Nest

In 2003 my sister-in-law got married the week before Christmas and she would be the last leaving home.  So now my in-laws would be all alone for the first time EVER!!  When they first married, they lived with my husband's grandparents and then after the birth of my husband's older brother, they built a house.  So they had never actually been by themselves in the 30+ years they had been married.  I knew my mother-in-law was sad about her baby leaving home, so I thought I would get them some stockings and fill them for them and put them on their bed.  So this is a tradition I started and is still going on today, some six years later.  I always ask my mother-in-law when we get to her house Christmas Eve, "Do you have your stockings out on your bed?"  It is fun.  I make my husband pick out things for his daddy's stocking and I pick out for my mother-in-laws stocking.  The stocking is my most favorite part of Christmas.  I always fill my mom a stocking as well.  

LORI