O Christmas Tree

I LOVE my Christmas tree--not because it's expertly decorated or lavish in any way, but because every ornament has a history. Each year, each kid gets to pick a new ornament, and each year as we get out all of the boxes of Christmas decorations, each child excitedly looks for their ornaments and gets to place them on the tree, anywhere they want. You would think as they got older, the excitement of this activity would wane, but it doesn't. Zac tried to act like he didn't want to participate this year, but it didn't take much encouragement for him to add his collection to the branches including the Darth Vader M&M ornament he picked out yesterday. Nathan added another train for the 7th year in a row and Alyssa chose a cute shoe for her fetish for fashion. Katie is still undecided, but hopefully she'll have one by the end of the week. Nathan is always sad that he doesn't have as many as everyone else, but letting him hang Kevin's ornaments on the tree seems to make him happier.

My ornaments always come from places we've visited, so there's a few from Disney plus a San Francisco cable car, a Boston ship, Statue of Liberty, the White House, etc. and now a few from India that Kevin bought for me--the perfect gift! These join a few cross stitched and smocked ornaments that I made "way back when" during my days with one child and visions of grandeur of having a tree with all homemade ornaments on it. I'm glad I didn't stick with that plan because we would have missed out on a lot of fun family memories.