Christmas Tree

We bought a new Christmas tree this year. We went with a fake one again. If that sounds a little Scrooge-y, it really isn't. For our first few Christmases together, Brian and I would buy a real tree. They always died before Christmas day and they are expensive. Double boooo. Five years ago we bought a huge fake tree because we have vaulted ceilings, so I thought we needed a huge tree. No, we actually just needed a tall one. I forgot how small our front room is. So this year we have a tall skinny tree! Hooray! Now it looks like we have a lot of ornaments. :)

Speaking of ornaments... Other than the ornaments I bought in sets of eight (red balls, gold balls, gingerbread ladies and gingerbread stars, and glittery "toys") for our first Christmas tree, our tree is decorated with ornaments we collect during the year. Sometimes we pick one up even though we're not on vacation - like the Cuckoo Clock I got while I was shopping with my Mom in Midway.

Most of the time, though, we get our Christmas tree ornaments during a trip. We go to North Carolina to visit family more often than any other destination, so we have several ornaments from there. My two favorites are the lighthouse we picked up in the summer of 2001 when my entire family stayed in a beach house for a week. Last year we went to North Carolina for an almost-family reunion (my sister, Makenzie, and her family couldn't come) and found a beautiful gold pine cone while shopping around Chapel Hill. In October 2003 I took a solo trip to North Carolina to visit with each of my sisters for a few days. (At the time four of them lived in different cities within the state. Now only one sister lives there.) While I was staying with Allyn in Winston-Salem, she took me to "Old Salem." It's just a street, really, but it's all decked out the way it looked 200 years ago. I picked up several Moravian star ornaments. (Allyn's oldest girl is pretty loud and I still have a clear memory of her shouting from the back of the van, "IS THIS OLD SALEM?" She didn't want to miss it. Hilarious.)

For Bridget's first Christmas, Brian's Mom gave her an ornament. I was so happy to get that for our tree. I'd been looking for one for months, but somehow Grandma found the perfect one. Bridget loves to visit it and she has finally stopped taking it off the tree. :)