the first Christmas after we were married. That year we went out and bought the prettiest angel we could find for the top of our tree. We also bought a pale pink glass heart -- appropriate for a young couple in their first year of marriage. At that time we decided that we would buy one special ornament each year (the next year we added "regardless of the cost" because the ornament we fell in love with was a lot more than it should have been).Every year we pick one day and go ornament shopping. We always go alone together. We used to do it while the boys were in daycare, but now we just tell them where we're headed and off we go. We hold hands and wander the mall and look over several (hundred) ornaments until we find just the right one. There hasn't been a year yet when we haven't agreed on our purchase. Sometimes it only takes one stop. Some years it takes more than one shopping trip. There's no way to know how long it will take or where we will find it, but we always know it's out there -- we just have to keep looking.
This year by the time we got all 19 previous ornaments on the tree it was nearly full. Of course we found a place for the ornaments that were important to us (photos, an engraved heart, the pipe-cleaner snowman), but it made me think: some day our boys will have all of these... some day they'll be setting up the tree for the "family Christmas" and we'll be long gone, but they will pull out each ornament and line them up to put them on in order just like always... they'll argue over who gets to put on the seahorses and they'll reminisce about the year the younger one climbed the lilacs to retrieve the cardinals' nest after the babies had flown... they'll look at the ones that contain photos and remark, as we always do, that we sure have changed... and they'll remember all those Christmases together in our house full of love, and they will (I hope) continue those traditions with their families.
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