Life Through a Christmas Tree

Since my last post was “Life through a lens”, it's only fitting to title this post “Life through a Christmas tree”.

Everyone has their Christmas favorites.

I learned this year (thanks to Kelly) that my mother’s fondest memory of her mother was at Christmas. Her mother would take her to downtown Chicago, to State street, to see the Christmas decorations in all of the windows, and to see Santa.

My favorite part of Christmas has to be my Christmas tree. Kyle bought me our tree a few years ago, and it’s perfect. The only thing better than the tree is all of the memories that go on the tree.

The star that I have isn’t the prettiest star, but it was from my dad’s parent’s Christmas tree. I’m a sucker for family heirlooms (heirlooms = hand-me-downs) J

Every year since I was born, my maternal grandmother would buy me a Christmas ornament and write my name and the year on it. The thing is, my grandmother always paid a lot of attention to my latest fad or craze...  
*Little known secret about me: as a child I LOVED teddy bears (hey don’t laugh).

When I started playing piano, grandma found me an ornament of a teddy bear playing the piano; when I played basketball she found a teddy bear playing basketball. Get the picture??

This one must be when I decided to join band and played the drums. Drumming was a short-lived career (read:I sucked)

When grandma passed away, my mom would buy me an ornament every year (though not quite as creative as my grandmother’s). My aunt DJ started to get us annual ornaments as well; this year she gave us each one that my cousin made. Hopefully these artistic creations will become a future tradition). BTW, you should check out her etsy site: http://www.etsy.com/shop/yoshcreative

Ever since Kyle and I started dating, he would buy me ornaments with the year on them and put a photo of us in them. See sample below:

As I took down the Christmas tree tonight, I looked at the ornament that Kyle gave me each year, and it made me smile. Such wonderful memories. I married the best guy ever.

So there you have it, my past and present all on my Christmas tree.

As for the future, I choose this ornament:

I received it at my good friend, Hannah’s Christmas party. I hope that this Christmas gathering becomes a tradition, because Hannah and her bf Whitney, have become two of mine and Kyle’s closest friends. Definitely our favorite couple in the whole world to hangout with (sorry to all the other couples out there, but these two are really just that cool. Don't believe me? check out Hannah’s blog here: hannahshaner.com) Hopefully in 2032 I'm hanging 20 of these on our tree!

Well, the Christmas tree is all packed up. I’m excited to take out all of the ornaments & hang the star again next year; and reminisce about all the activities and obsessions of my childhood, remember my grandmothers, and remind myself how lucky I am to have such amazing people in my life.