Trimming the Christmas Tree with Memories

My favorite part of Christmas preparations is decorating the tree which we did the day after Thanksgiving. We have a real tree this year too! A 5 ft. Blue Spruce...what a lovely smell!

Who's says I'm never in pictures? Look! There's the back of my head!

Every year we buy the kids a Christmas decoration to commemorate a memorable event of the past year. This year I found blue rubber Kansas keychains to hang on the tree. I'd say moving to Kansas from Illinois will be a memorable event in their childhood wouldn't you?

And of course there was the year we brought Knothead the dog home which we commemorated with bone ornaments.

Then there was the Christmas we bought each boy a house ornament because we had lived in four, yes four, different houses in a 12 month period. That was a crazy year!

Not all the tree ornaments are for the kids though. The tree also holds tatted snowflakes my mom made.

But my most precious ornaments were made by my great great grandmother, who is almost 97 years old. Every Thanksgiving she would pass out ornaments to all of her grandkids and great grandkids that she'd made that year. I wish I knew just how many she had made for us all over the years.

And then there's this one....the whiskey bottle. This was hanging on DR's Christmas tree when I first met him. By the way, his bachelor Christmas tree was a broken branch off of maple tree, covered in beer cans and stuck in a five gallon bucket in his living room. Good thing I came along to civilize him wasn't it?

Decorating the tree with my kids every year gives me another chance to share our family history with them. The things we've done and the family they may not remember. And it gives me a chance to be thankful for my childhood and our wonderful extended family.