On the sixth day of Christmas, half a dozen roses were delivered to me at the dance studio with a note that said, “Six roses for my true love on the sixth day of Christmas. Let’s plan to meet at 6:00 for a quick dinner before the party tonight. Love, Josh.”

The party was Angelo’s holiday party. He and Mona are married now (not sure if I ever mentioned that). They have a spectacular house and the party was hosted there. They have it there every year. I’ve been invited every year but kind of avoided it because of Josh. I actually went two years ago with Josh (as friends) but other than that I’ve declined. It was nice to finally get there with Josh as more than friends.

We were slow dancing at one point and he confessed that he had seriously thought about trying to get me under the mistletoe two years ago. I said, “maybe we should get under it now.” He smiled at me, took my hand and walked me over to the mistletoe and gave me a sweet kiss.

The seventh day of Christmas was different from the other days so far. Josh came over after lunch and announced that for the seventh day of Christmas, we were going to celebrate the Christmas we didn’t have in 2010. He handed me seven letters and said, that they were seven letters that he wrote that year but never sent. He told me after I never responded to any of his letters, he stopped sending them. He wrote them because he felt like he needed to write some stuff out. He wasn’t sure why he kept them until recently, when he decided he was going to give them to me.

Reading them was tough. I was finally able to see what he went through - thinking that I was ignoring him, and trying to let go of me. My heart broke reading them, but it also healed as I learned what was really going on. He said he wanted a 2010 do over, so we went out and pretended it was 2010 (he created a playlist of songs popular in 2010) and we had dinner and walked through town.

The eighth day of Christmas was the day we planned to go to NYC for the day. We took the train up and had a long and exhausting day. When we got home, he gave me a list. He said we were redoing Christmas 2011. That was the year that he had his appendix out and I confessed to him about the pictures in my head of our future together. I thought he was unconscious for my little confession, but I recently found out he had heard all of it.

His list was the 8 pictures in his head of our future: me in a white dress and him in a tuxedo, us standing in front of a house, an ultrasound picture, a second ultrasound picture, us and the kids at Disney World, just the two of us in Paris, the kids’ weddings, and the birth of grandchildren. He said, “you’re by my side in everyone.”

The Ninth Day of Christmas was the day we had a 2012 redo. It was the year that Josh’s dad

got sick. We weren’t together but he leaned on me quite a bit for several weeks that year. I actually thought we might get back together at one point but he was so focused on his family that it didn’t happen. He actually moved home with his parents for the second half of that year.

Christmas in 2012 was kind of depressing. It just had a sad feeling about it. My life was okay, but it was hard to watch the Andersons going through such a difficult time. Things were so uncertain for them, and I had lost a parent so I knew how scared Josh and Lauren were feeling. Now, you’ve probably figured out that Mr. Anderson is okay, but at the time we didn’t know what was going to happen.

There was no big Christmas Eve party at the Anderson’s house that year. There wasn’t much celebration at all. It was a tough year.

I could understand why Josh would want a do-over on 2012, but he didn’t want the sadness of that year to cloud our fun now so we watched “Christmas Vacation” for some laughter, and he gave me a note with the nine reasons I’m “his person.”