Ornaments that make me smile :)

I love Christmas decorations. I get so excited each year to pull out my Christmas tree ornaments and reflect how I got each precious one. Andrew's not much for trimming the tree, so I get the joy of handling it all on my own. He was out of town last night, so as soon as I got Madeleine down to sleep I headed downstairs to begin my task. I turned on Christmas with the Kranks and built a nice big fire to get me kicked off right. I really wanted to have it all done so that in the morning she would be greeted by her Christmas tree.

It took me until after 1 in the morning, but success! This morning it was priceless to see Madeleine's reaction - I really wish I had set up a camera, she LOVED it! I've been really worried about how she would handle the tree with the ornaments, luckily I have a lot of non-breakables I could put in the lower portion of the tree for her to enjoy. She has (so far) been great with the tree.

I have had the tree lights on all day. There's just something about the soft glow of Christmas lights that make life just seem all rosy and warm inside. I love the memories associated with my tree, they remind of great people, places I've been, or childhood stories. These are probably my 10 top favorite ornaments (in no particular order).

This "love" ornament is actually part of a set of three that also say peace and joy. Our good friends June and Jorgen gave us this beautiful set a few years ago and it reminds me of the wonderful friends that we have in our lives.

This is probably the cheesiest ornament on our tree and again actually is part of a set. I think it was the first Christmas we were married that Burger King was selling these Cat in the Hat ornaments at a special price. So these ornaments remind me of how Andrew was eager to make sure we had the whole set and how precious those early years we spent together were as a newly married couple.

This was probably the first of our now many outdoorsy themed ornaments. Every year we go to REI to see what the latest ornaments are that we can acquire for our tree. I almost have enough to have a separate outdoorsy type tree. I love these because this represents our time we love to spend hiking and camping and enjoying being outside.

I have lots of bells on my tree. For a few reasons - one, I grew up watching "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas and it always touched me with the line, "Teacher says, 'Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings'." If you haven't seen "It's a Wonderful Life", you need to so you can fill that missing void in your life that you never knew you had! The other main reason that I have bells on my Christmas tree is it reminds me of my wedding. We got married 2 days after Christmas and for our send-off we gave out bells as party favors and our guests rang them as we whisked off as husband and wife.

We honeymooned in Helen, GA, which was actually quite wonderful. We had an excellent cabin with such a cute, quaint little alpine village close by. While we were there we perused an antique shop in the Nacochee Village where they had several Christmas ornaments marked down after the holidays, and a new tradition was born! We now buy ornaments for our anniversary presents and it helps us to remember the year. This star was one of the firsts we bought together (the other is the pickle mentioned below - keep reading!). This star is extra special because it has just recently been able to hang on our tree. We had three stocking holders on our mantel, and hung the star in the middle stocking holder with mine and Andrew's stocking on either side. It informally represented the hope we had to move that star to hold a stocking for a child. Our prayers were answered after 4 long years with our Madeleine being lovingly placed with our family. The star now is placed on our tree, but I will never forget the significance behind that special ornament.

This icicle is special because it is identical to icicles my Mom would place on our Christmas tree when I was younger (and even still today!). It reminds me of my happy childhood and how my Mom has always worked so hard to make sure the holidays are magical for our family.

My Aunt Martha is extremely special to me. She is about as close as you can get to being a saint on this earth. We like to joke in our family that Aunt Martha is saving the world, one person at a time. She really is in tune with other people's needs, and instead of waiting to ask she just does! Every year she gets us a special ornament to put on our tree, obviously this one was received when I got married, but I also have one for when we bought our house, our baby, and one's that represent our interests. When I look at these ornaments, I think of my dear Aunt and am reminded of the many opportunities to serve and help others around me and hopefully carry on her legacy of caring.

Awww, the pickle. If you are ever in treated to spend a Christmas morning with the Mills family you will be in for a treat! My Mom thrives on Christmas traditions! I was always tortured Christmas morning because we had a set time that we were allowed to finally be awake (act like you are awake any earlier and beware of the consequences!). This killed me! I never could sleep Christmas Eve, so I would usually give up my quest for sleep around 3:30 a.m. and pester my other siblings until 7:30 a.m. when we could finally go into Mom and Dad's room for family prayer, then for Dad to turn on the Christmas lights, get the camcorder ready, and us kids to line up at the top of the stairs (used to be youngest to oldest, 'til I became the shorty and now we line up shortest to tallest) then Mom would call downstairs to Dad, "Steve, did Santa Claus come?", which he would make some smart alec reply and then we were able to attempt to make it down the stairs without anyone getting seriously injured. Here's the pick catch and the reason for my long rant about Christmas mornings, there was a pickle. The tradition is that Santa Claus hides the pickle somewhere in the tree and the first to find the pickle receives an extra present. Cassidie and Kayleen used to be serious brutes about it and I've only been able to successfully locate the pickle only once in my life, but again, I love the significance behind this silly ornament and it makes me smile every time I see it on my tree.

This is my ultra special Madeline ornament given to me by my Mom when I was a teenager so it has been around for a while (explanation for the poor severed hand!). I loved the Madeline books by Ludwig Bemelmans when I was a child (I especially loved the line, "She was not afraid of mice, she loved winter, snow and ice. To the tiger in the zoo, Madeline said, 'poo poo'.". My Mom could just about recite the whole Madeline book to me, I loved it so much. I loved the name Madeline as a little girl and when I was in high school, my foreign language teacher required us to take French names listed in our textbook, Madeleine (pronounced Mad-uh-lyn) was the closest to Madeline I could get. Yep, so that's how our little Madeleine got her name!

We love to collect ornaments from places we've been, so if you've been a loyal blog reader, you'll remember our trip to Chattanooga a little over a year ago when we saw Rock City. I love looking at these ornaments and remembering the fun places and times we have spent together as a family.

I hope your Christmas season is filled with as much joy as mine has been reflecting on all the things that I am so grateful and happy with the hope of a better tomorrow. Thank you for being a part of my life and for sticking through this long nostalgic post.