My Favorite Christmas Ornament

This year we moved up to a "big" tree.
which you can tilt your head to the left to see because for some reason the picture didn't flip. My Mom and Michael bought a new tree this year so we adopted their "old" 7.5ft tree and our little Charlie Brown one is out in the shed (it's probably pretty lonely these days...). I was concerned about moving to the big tree because I thought that we would never have enough ornaments to fill it. Then, Mike reminded me of how the little tree was almost falling over last year because of all of our ornaments.

I must confess that most of the ornaments on the tree are "mine". My Mom started a tradition a long time ago of getting us an ornament every year for Christmas so that we would have plenty when we started our own trees. Now Sam has tons of ornaments too and Ray is starting his collection this year. Poor Mike...he had a dozen or so ornaments and that's it. He has all the Star Wars characters and some other odds and ends. I think his favorite is one that was his Dad's when he was young. It's a light green ball with toys painted on it in white. Each year I have been trying to find Mike ornaments to add to the tree. I can't say whether or not I found one for him this year since it's not Christmas yet but, if I did happen to find him one I would assume that it's pretty awesome. Oh, and my Mom, if she happened to get him and ornament this year it's pretty awesome too....


Anyways, on to my favorite ornament. It is one that I can clearly remember being on my Grandma's tree every year and then my Mom had it for a while. I think my Mom handed it down to me last year after I made a comment that someday I wanted it to be mine. It is a plastic lime green bird cage like shape with a pinwheel inside it. If you position it just right over top the lights the heat makes it spin. Looking at this ornament takes me right back to standing in front of my Grandma's tree in her "library" and watching the pin wheel go round and round. It takes me back to a room full of way too many presents, Princess House plates, miss matched cloth napkins, sitting on radiators until your butt couldn't stand it anymore, making "suicide" cocktails (a combination of every pop available) with my cousins, Grandma Orange sitting in her pink arm chair, Crystal the dog getting bread ties stuck in the roof of her mouth, staying up way to late on Christmas Eve at Grandma's house that by the time you get home it's past midnight and even as a little kid I slept in on Christmas morning... All those memories from a little ornament.

This year Sam spotted the ornament too. It's fun to hold him up and let him watch it. If it's not moving around then we both count to 3 and blow until the ornament spins.

It's fun to sit around the tree. Sam likes the "pretty lights" and Ray tries to eat the branches. I put a bucket of all Sam and Ray's Christmas books next to the tree and we sit in the rocker and read and I think about how it will be fun to look back on these times with fond memories and maybe the boys will have a special favorite ornament that brings it all back to them.