“Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” Kevin Arnold

Enough of all of that dark & emo crap! I’m feeling chipper today, and I wanted to blog about something that means a lot to me… Master Chief & my Christmas ornaments. (Not what you were expecting, huh?)

Every year Master Chief & I get a new Christmas ornament (or 3 – I’m addicted). Every year we get something to represent (sometimes in obscure ways) something BIG that happened that year. For example – our 2009 ornament is a 3 in one combo. It was bought in Bar Harbor, Maine when we went to Acadia National Park for our pre-wedding vacation/honeymoon. It is 2 Puffins nose to nose above a little tree. It is 3-in-1 because it’s from Bar Harbor where we vacationed, it has 2 Puffins (I <3 Puffins) representing Master Chief & me (and the first time I saw a Puffin in the wild), and they are looking at each other like we did while getting married. Those 3 things – vacation, Puffins, wedding – summed up 2009 for us. (I told you they can be obsure. *wink*) 2010′s ornament is a blue crab. Why? We bought a house (settled) in Maryland – the home of crab (so we’ve been told!). (OBSURE!!!) The only ornament that we’ve purchased that doesn’t really mean anything is the one from 2002 (our second Christmas) – we were running out of time and couldn’t find any that really said anything about 2002 (nothing happend for us – Master Chief graduated High School but that wasn’t an us thing). The ornament is supposed to light up but it never has – oh well. It’s a funny ornament to us now since it’s kinda the “odd ornament out”.
Since we moved to Maryland, we’ve had a “pretty tree” that is decked out in red, white & black. Earlier this year I bought the perfect topper for it and now it’s pretty much complete. (I have to make 6 rolls of maroon ribbon into one big roll, but that’s all I have to do.) Our new house has the PERFECT spot for the tree and I loved the tree since the day we put it up. It fits our house, and now that it’s down the living room is kinda empty. I love our pretty tree, but I’m ready for our “fun” ornaments to come home. See, our “fun” ornaments are at my in-laws house. They have 2 trees – the “pretty” one in the formal living room & a fun one downstairs where Santa leaves gifts. Our “fun” ornaments have gone on that tree since we started dating. It’s time they come home to MD with us though. I miss them! See – they decorate the fun tree on Christmas Eve and so we only see those ornaments for about 3 days. We’ll be bringing them home from the in-laws when we are there in a few weeks for a hockey game. (You know I had to get Hockey in there somewhere!) They will then be repacked and stored.

Yes – I said repacked. My MIL doesn’t have the zest for perfectly wrapped delicate ornaments like I do, and it's not her job/responsibility to pack our ornaments to my specs! Her ornaments go in one big box and there they sit for a year. Our ornaments get put away in a very specific and protective arrangement. I am pretty crazy about it, and it makes me twitch on Christmas Eve to see my precious ornaments just tossed in our box (special ornament box no less). I was starting to hyperventalate this year because I couldn’t find some of our ornaments. I had their boxes but I couldn’t find the actual oranament. We found them in a shoe box that was just sitting on a shelf in Master Chief’s old room. I nearly cried! What if they had been broken? I can’t be mad at my MIL but I would have been. I would have been heartbroken! So in a few short weeks they’ll come home and be wrapped in tissue paper and put away where I can see them whenever I want to!

Our hope for this coming Christmas is an evergreen tree with a root ball for our “fun” tree. The fun tree will live downstairs in the (soon to be) Game Room. Master Chief and I were talking on our way home from Christmas about getting a real tree for the “fun” tree and I said “I’d love to get one we can plant after Christmas” and Master Chief agreed with me. We’re both “Nature Nerds” and so having a tree we can plant is really cool to us. We’ll have to talk to someone about how to do this since we don’t know when to re-plant it, etc.

Oh! I forgot to mention that V & K (our cats) get ornaments every year too. V gets an ornamanet from the Naughty Kitty series (by Hallmark) & K gets whatever cute cat themed ornament we can find. K’s ornament is usually the last one bought because she doesn’t have any specific things about her except she’s cute and a tabby (and a Princess). Most of her ornaments feature a cat with a crown.

I’m going to take pictures of our ornaments and either start a journal or a FaceBook Album with why we picked them, where we got it, and what it means to us. If we ever have kids in the future I want them to know what these ornaments represent, so that when it’s time for them to go through them when we either go to a Nursing Home or pass away they can see the whys and wheres and decide if they mean anything to them.

Do your ornaments mean anything? Are you as anal about their packaging as I am? (I doubt anyone is!)