We decorated our Christmas tree over the weekend. It's very toddler-friendly. With a curious two-almost-three-year-old and a new baby on the way, it will be a while before we can have a Christmas tree filled with fragile ornaments. I don't care so much about having a "department store tree;" I'd rather have a tree full of ornaments with meaning. So I got a little upset when I realized that we don't have ornaments to commemorate our important milestones. Okay, a lot upset. I blame the pregnancy hormones.
I love beautiful Christmas ornaments, but there is a soft spot in my heart for Lenox. I love to give ornaments as gifts, and I'd love to get a new ornament every year (hint, hint, Paul). But we just haven't bought ornaments for ourselves over the years. We don't have an ornament to commemorate the year that we bought our home (2007), or Joey's first Christmas (2008). We don't have an ornament for the first year Paul and I were together (2004) or the year we got engaged (2005). We don't have an ornament for 2009, which must have been pretty uneventful because I can't recall anything big happening. The only annual ornament that we do have is for 2006, the year Paul and I got married. And actually, we received that one as a gift.
Fortunately, all of these annual ornaments can be found on eBay, new or used, for every important milestone. I bought our ornament for 2007, and I'm the high bidder on one for 2008. I do wonder, will buying these ornaments so many years later give them less meaning? Will it matter that I purchased these potential family heirlooms from eBay? I hope that in 20 years I won't even remember.
You'll remember that you purchased them on ebay, and they will be all the more meaningful because you will remember that you thought it important to remember....and funny to think about them coming a year or two late..It's our 19th Christmas together. This year, so many ornaments got left off the tree! It's just not big enough to hold them all. The ones that stay year to year are the "milestones" and the ones that were given by people who we loved and aren't with us anymore.
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