Our First Christmas and a Few of My Favorite Things

We braved the 26 degree weather Friday night and went shopping for our Christmas tree. You know, because nothing says holiday cheer like frostbite...

We came home, had hot chocolate, put the kids to bed and strung the lights, then Saturday morning let them help us put up the ornaments. One of the ornaments we hang on our tree each year is a time capsule that we got on our first Christmas in 2000. In it is a small scroll where Lee and I wrote the details of our first Christmas as a married couple. This is what it looks like:Inside it say: Our First Christmas it was - cold and icy in Dallas
We lived at - St. Charles at Stonebriar apartment complex in Frisco, TX
At that time the new was full of stories like - Presidential Election Controversy, crazy snow storms in the north, the Rams beat the Saints and sqeaked into the play-offs - then lost.
We shared lots of Christmas traditions like - opening stocking on Christmas Eve. Getting up at the crack of dawn (this is a family tradition of mine that Lee has grown to love over the course of the last eight years - it fills him with such joy to creep out of bed at 5:00 am)
We celebrated the season with special people like: Herb, Barbara and Zach Dec. 10; Richard, Candy, Brett and Jared on Christmas; Old Baylor friends on New Years
We got each other presents like: Lee got Kelli a Karaoke machine, Anna Karenina in russian and clothes; Kelli got Lee clothes, "Rich, Dad, Poor Dad," and an old LIFE magazine about JFK (that's so random - I don't know why I bought him that or where that magazine is now!)

Anyway, it's always fun to read that and remember Christmas 2000, our first together. And here are a few more of my favorite ornaments.
I have no idea where we got his ornament but it makes me laugh. It's a hula wearing Santa surfing on two dolphins and he kind of looks like he's making an obscene gesture. Of course, that only makes sense right? Bizarre.

My First Christmas ornament from 1978. In a few years I'm not sure that I'll like that one quite as much though - it's starting to make me feel old.

Here is a picture of Lee when he was around 9 or 10. The ornament it's nestled in is looking a little ragged, but he's old too so...

There is a story behind this one. When I was a kid, my mom bought a blown glass Statue of Liberty ornament at some hole in the wall shop in Wisconsin. She loved the ornament, the rest of us thought it was ugly and a little odd so every Christmas she would hang it front and center on the tree and we would move it to the back of the tree. Back and forth we moved it throughout the entire season. It became the family joke - until college when it was mysteriously lost forever and we were all a little sad. But, low and behold, my mom was, I think, in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago and she stumbled upon not one, but two more of these horrendous ornaments which she bought for me and for herself. So now I hang mine on the back of the tree and every time mom or dad comes to my house they move it to the front and the tradition lives on!

And here we are, freezing our tails off to get our very lovely, very piney tree. I love the smell of a Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas everybody!