Ornament Tradition

I just love it when we put the Christmas tree up each year. Gavin even helped this time, and he's been pretty good at walking away when we remind him not to touch the ornaments now that the tree is all done. For our first Christmas married, Leonard & I went to Hallmark and picked out a cute little acorn with 2 chipmunks inside celebrating their first Christmas together. Every year since then we've picked out a new ornament symbolic for that year. It's been a fun tradition for us, and as we place each one on the tree each year our kids love hearing the story behind each one.


This year our ornament is "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." Not only do we love the song by Gayla Peevey, but it represents that next Christmas we'll have a new little baby in our family. (Plus, I feel like a hippopotamus this Christmas!)


In 2006, I was pregnant with Gavin who was due to arrive the following January 9th. We bought the first house in the "Noelville" series because it had a gingerbread man inside, representing my pregnancy with Gavin, and the house represented Kaleb & Noe starting their first year of school. Gavin debuted early on December 17th, so luckily we were still able to get a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament for him to represent 2006. We really liked our Noelville ornament though, so we decided to collect the whole series now. This year is house #3, 2008 Gingerbread Lane.

Last year, a new series was created "Doorways Around the World." We decided our "Noelville" series could be for "her" and this new series could be for "him." This year is doorway #2, Mexico.

Our kids love our Little People Deluxe Christmas Story set, so this year when I saw the miniature of it in an ornament I just had to get it!

*As you can see our tradition of one new ornament a year has grown to 2, and 3, and sometimes 4 ornaments a year. Even though we love all of the ornaments on our tree these are the most special and tell our story through the years.