Tour of the Tree

**Note: I wrote this last week after a few too many days of being pretty stuck inside our apartment. We left London for a few days and we know there is even more snow waiting for us when we get back. Sigh.**

I thought I'd take you on a personal tour of our Christmas tree. Because you're snowed in for the fourth straight day, too, right? You've stared at the snow, whirling around in the street light until you think you see your own face in it, too, right? Until it looks like it's actually going up, instead of falling?

Okay then!


My mom has given me a Starbucks ornament for the past several years. I'm not obsessed with Starbucks, but the ornaments are kind of snazzy. I probably go there during Christmas more than any other time.




















































































They're American Girl sized!

Most (oh, all) of our ornaments were gifts from either my mom or John's mom.

























John's mom usually had a theme. This sparkly guy was from the year of fish ornaments.
























The year of bears.


























That angel wasn't part of a themed year, and I think she gave it to John independently of the usual ornament tradition.
The ornaments from my mom, besides Starbucks, don't show a pattern. But they're also only a fraction of the ornaments she's given me over the years. We've got this G. I. Joe ornament:

























An Eiffel Tower from my mom, the year I went to France.

























And a beautiful red ball from my Grandma Madge.
























I took these elves from my mom's boxes of Christmas stuff years ago. I can picture exactly where they were in our house growing up: lowest, left-hand side section of the entertainment center in our living room when we lived on Hemlock Lane.




















These houses are from a series that Hallmark started the year I was born. My mom has bought one every single year and usually puts them in my stocking. Every year is a different type of building; a barber shop, a Victorian house, a drug store, other old-timey places.


















We've started calling the living room "the Christmas room." I like to plug in the tree and write my papers there.