I think every year I've blogged about our Christmas ornaments for the year. Christmas in our house is a big deal and it's probably the only holiday that I go all out for. I really enjoy the insanity that December becomes. I love shopping Thanksgiving night, Black Friday, I love wrapping, I love getting cards out in the mail with our letter, I love the kids' holiday concerts at school, I love the tree, the decorations, the cookies, literally every single thing about Christmas is my favorite. The feeling I get during this season is something I wish I had the entire year. I feel like things would be a lot better if that were the case.
Our tradition has always been that the tree goes up on Black Friday. We all participate, we eat candy and leftovers, we watch The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, it's a big deal. This year I'm just so anti-Thanksgiving that we decided to put the tree up early. It's not a great photo, but you can see Lucy was here for it. She kept looking at the lights in amazement and looking at the rest of us, making sure we were seeing this too. It was pretty adorable.
New to our house this year was this Poppy Troll blow up for the yard. It was in the box but the girls BEGGED for us to open it and turn it on. They were loving it.
Our tradition, as it has been since our very first Christmas, is that we buy one ornament that sums up our year, or that meant something to us. The very first ornament on our tree the very first year we spent Christmas together was a bulb that my Grandma Linda had hand painted with our names and year put on it. It's kind of bittersweet that her and Grandpa aren't here this year but such is life, right?
This year I bought an ornament from the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney. Of course I didn't go to Disney this year but I found it online and I had to have it. I think I bought it when there were talks of getting rid of that ride and it's my favorite so I wanted something to remember it by.
Our family ornament this year is this beaded zebra. I bought him when we were at Kalahari in the Wisconsin Dells. We also went to Great Wolf Lodge in the summer but I already have a cool wolf bulb ornament from there. The zebra is very cool and it's as fragile as he looks, he's pretty sturdy!
Then we also let the kids pick out an ornament each. The hope is that someday, when they go out on their own, I can hand them a box of ornaments so they'll have a little piece of home with them.
You can tell Lucy really took this seriously.
Here are the 2018 selections.
Jackson chose Harry Potter, Olivia chose Voldemort, Penelope chose a glittery roller skate, and Lucy chose Moana. (She struggled between Moana and Spiderman). The big kids were big into Harry Potter this year and I'm certain Penelope picked hers because it's shiny. She's like a squirrel in that way.
So that's it.
That's our tree.
Every ornament has a meaning, and every meaning has a story.