Our tree is up! Hurray!!! I'm not one to really decorate for holidays, but Christmas is the one time of year I pull boxes full of decorations out of the basement. I LOVE Christmas trees. I love the sparkling lights. I love the feathery shadows they make on the ceiling. I love the joy that they represent. And I love to decorate them with all of the ornaments I have collected over the years!
On our tree, each and every ornament has a personal connection to me and my family. Some of them mean more than others, of course, but they all have a story!
Some are from places I've visited. This one is a "chicken bus" I got in Guatemala.
This is the gold medal I received for climbing the Great Wall outside of Beijing.
I hauled this puppy back from Paris (as in France, not Missouri)!
Tom and I bought this fine fellow on our honeymoon in Mexico.
This ornament came from Chicago and our first ever vacation with Sarah.
Some of the ornaments have a little deeper meaning, though. This lamb ornament has been near the top of the Christmas tree every year since I was a little girl, and it has a REAL story to go with it!
Some of my favorite Christmas stories come from The Animals' Merry Christmas, which is a collection of stories written by Kathryn Jackson and illustrated by Richard Scarry. I love "The Bare Polar Bear," but my all-time favorite, tear-up-every-year Christmas-time story is "The Christmas Tree Lamb." It's the story of an ornament, once shiny and new, passed down from grandmother, to mother, to daughter. By the time the daughter inherits the lamb, his fleece is dusty and grey, he only has one bead eye, two of his legs have broken off, and his little ribbon collar and golden bell are long gone. Listening to her mother and grandmother talk about how beautiful the lamb once was as he "frolicked from branch to branch" inspires the little girl to restore the lamb to his original glory. She fixes him up in her room and then waits until her mother is not looking. Then she waits until her grandmother is not looking. Then she climbs up on a chair and puts the beautiful lamb back near the top of the tree where he belongs. Of course the grandmother and mother are amazed at the transformation, and everyone enjoys the lamb (and the Christmas tree!) together.
(I seriously just teared up a little retelling that story. Imagine, if you will, how hard it is for me to actually read the stupid thing aloud to my own daughters!)
This year, I read the story to the girls and then let Sarah put the lamb near the top of the tree. She was pretty proud to be helping decorate the tree, but I don't think she fully understands the wonder of this story. (And, honestly, probably never will - she'll just make fun of me for crying over it year after year!)
Other ornaments that will certainly make me cry in future years include this beauty from Sarah's 1st Christmas...
...and this one from Kate's 1st Christmas!
Tears aside, I think the tree looks pretty good this year. I can't wait to fill in those blank spots with more memories with my family, though!!
The girls seem to enjoy the tree, too...
One of my favorite things to do as a kid was to lay on the sofa in front of the tree each night. Sarah seems to have found some joy in that, too! Except, of course, she has put a definite Sarah spin on things - she lays on the sofa "like the Princess and the Pea"!
Wonder why I never thought to do that...
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