The holidays mean so many different things to different people. For me, many holidays that I remember were spent on the white sandy beaches of Florida, the result of having parents who worked in the school system and who enjoyed winter vacations on their break.
The early years are kind of a blur. I do remember Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, one of the few times my brother and I went to church (the result of one Catholic parent, and one decidedly non-Catholic parent).
We would leave the house hours before the service, and drive through a few of the nicer neighborhoods in town to look at the Christmas light displays. I remember tape on the door, to keep me and my brother from ruining the surprise on Christmas morning before Grandpa was in place with his camera. And I remember turkey dinners in the middle of the day, after the presents had all been unwrapped and explored.
When Josh and I became parents, we had to figure out our own version of Christmas. We still spend parts of the holiday with our extended families, but some things belong to our family alone.
Every year since Connor was born, we go to the same little tree farm and cut down our real Christmas tree. If you look closely, Connor's picture will be on their photo wall for every year of his life, even that first year when he was a month old and he went bundled inside his carseat carrier.
Another is the family Christmas card - which I certainly need to be working on this week, as it's getting pretty late in the game to be ordering those and getting those in the mail.
And one of the really fun traditions we have with our boys is their Keepsake ornaments.
It started several years back when Grammy brought over a box of ornaments for Josh - some that had been bought for him, but mostly ornaments that he had made over the years. You know, the kind made with colored pasta, buttons, yarn and all kinds of homemade stuff.
I like seeing those on our tree. Past and present blended together. So I decided we would do that for our boys - pick an ornament each year that represents an interest or snapshot of the boys in that year.
There are a lot of Pixar moments for our boys. But there are divergent interests, too. Xander, our artist, has several Crayola ornaments. Connor likes to be different, so there are a few Hot Wheels (his personal favorite) and even Curious George, which the other boys wouldn't like at all. And there are even Little People. Last year Xander had the yellow bus, because he is slightly obsessed with buses. This year Sawyer got the fire truck - a nod to Daddy's new job and his still love of lining up his Little People when he plays.
There are homemade ornaments in the mix, too. Sawyer made a foam penguin last year with his picture in it. Connor has a very heavy ceramic hand print from preschool.
And there are even ornaments that the boys have outgrown - Connor's once love of Ratatouille is long-since over. But there was a moment in time when he loved it - two years ago when we bought that ornament.
This year there is another artist for Xander who still loves colored letters more than anything - we have pages and pages of multi-colored letters he has drawn himself. For Connor there is a baseball snowman, because his whole life has been about baseball the last few seasons. And for Sawyer there is the Little People fire truck - a toy we actually had and something he still likes to pull out and line up when he plays.
It's a timeline of sorts ... about our boys, who they are and what they love in a particular moment in time.
