O Christmas Tree

I think one of the things I was most looking forward to this Christmas season was being able to decorate my tree with all of my ornaments.  It's been since 2005 that we decorated with all of our things!  I didn't know when I packed up my stuff that year that it would be 4 years before I saw it again!  Although I didn't get much of it out this year, I have enjoyed looking through all the things we did drag out. We plan to take a lot of it back to Guatemala with us.

This year we opted for a real tree and I am glad we did.  We didn't do much decorating while in Guatemala so I was thrilled when David came home with a very full 8 foot tree.  It's beautiful and the whole house smells like Christmas.  So, here's our tree-

I only put about half of our decorations on it but it's still pretty.

Speaking of decorations, I thought since I enjoyed seeing them all again that I'd share with you all a few of my special ornaments.  I loved looking at all of them.  I remembered the year and where most of them were purchased.  I love centimental ornaments-

This one was from our first Christmas together- 1996

I love anything from Willowtree!

and this was a childhood ornament of David's that I got from his mother and love hanging on our tree

I also love snowmen ornaments.  Most of our ornaments are snowmen.

Isn't she cute and sassy-

But my favorite ornaments of all are of our travels together.  We have always made it a tradition to buy ormanents from all the places we visit.  Here are a few favs-

This one was from one of our many cruises we have been on. (we LOVE cruising!!)

This was from our first trip to Gatlinburg in 2001

a trip to visit my brother in California in 2004

a trip to Gulf Shores in 2003

Gatlinburg 2002

Belize in 2004

one of our favorite trips of all time- Israel in 2005

Mexico in 2004

Gulf Shores 2005

As you can see, I also LOVE dated ornaments. 

We have ornaments from Guatemala but we did not bring any of them home.  Instead we brought stockings to hang this year to remind us of Guatemala. 

Well, that's just a small glimpse of our Christmas decorations this year.  It makes our hearts happy to see them and reminisce about the many memories each of them hold.