2013 Christmas Tree

Last year's Christmas tree was a true thing of beauty. 

Someone call Charlie Brown

Okay, so it was actually what my Dad described as a "dead cat tree" - you could swing a cat and not hit a branch. I very carefully didn't ask my Dad how he knew this…

This year we've done more decorating. We got the sled decorated during the Wreath Party.

My Christmas Sled

And for the first time in 20+ years, we purchased a tree. Last year's tree was cut from the property (no, we didn't shell out any cash for the poor thing) but this year we went all out and spent a bit of the ready for a nice tree.

Oooh!

About 7 feet tall. Smelling of all that a Christmas tree should (and not anything it shouldn't. Remind me to tell the cat pee tree story sometime. Ugh.). 

Tote that tree!

 And a magical evening was spent decorating.

Artistic, what?

All-in-all, a great tree.

Chris and I have a tradition. We've done this for all 23 years of our marriage. We buy (or make) a special ornament with the year on it. Many people do this. But we go one step further - we write a year in review on Christmas day and store it in the ornament's box. Nothing major - just a record of significant things that happened that year: a promotion, a move, a new pet or the loss of one, maybe a few notes on what we hope to do some day. And each year we get out all the ornaments and randomly read from the archives. It's fun to see what happened over the years. To see how we've changed and stayed the same. And it's a reminder of all that's come before and how much we've accomplished during our time together. It's my favorite part of Christmas.