Our Christmas Tree

A couple of weeks ago, Cheri put up the Christmas tree.  She tends to pick the days I’m at work to do all the work around the house so I can’t help.  Personally, I think she’s just selfish, but if it makes her happy to do all the work, who am I to stop her.  She went ahead and put up the lights and her ornaments and then left my ornaments for my 2 to put up. 

I took a photo of one ornament from when I was a kid and then next thing you know, I was snapping pictures of ornaments and it kind of gave a little insight into my life.  I get ornaments every year, my mom always buys all the kids and grandkids ornaments and it’s usually based on something your interested in or something that happened that year.

The ornament to the right is ceramic.  My brother and I painted these with our grandmother as kids.  I vaguely remember actually painting them but I do remember having a bunch of these on the tree when we were growing up.  I’m guessing throughout the years they were misplaced or broken because this seems to be the only one left.

I waited until the kids had finished decorating the tree before I started to take pictures, mainly because I didn’t think about it until after the kids had started putting them up.  Plus this way, you get to actually see the tree up close.  I know, exciting stuff here.  They are in sequence of the order that I took them.

I used to really love watching basketball.  Although I was a Michael Jordan fan, I respected the other players of NBA history.  Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were both still playing.  I was never a huge Magic Johnson fan but I did like Larry Bird.  It’s probably the slow, white guy thing that made me like him.

  

If you know me, you know I’m going to have some Michigan ornaments.  I actually have a few more but I took pictures of these as they are a couple of my favorites.

  

I took a picture of a couple of the kids ornaments as well.  A train for Trevor, he’s still into trains although now that I think about it, he hasn’t broke out his track in awhile so maybe he isn’t.  But that doesn’t matter for ornaments.  Samantha’s ornament is a guitar (which she keeps asking for) with Hannah Montana on it.  She still like Hannah Montana but is more into Miley Cyrus now.  Yes, she knows they are the same person.

Any good Indianapolis Colts fan is going to have Colts candy canes, come on, that should have been a given.  Don’t ask me what that Mrs. Clause ornament is, must be Cheri’s.

Awww, our first Christmas ornament.  Yes, we’ve only been married a couple of years, try to keep up.

This one isn’t mine, but I thought it was cute.  A baby’s first Christmas ornament from 1993 which would make that cute baby Christopher.  Who is now 19 and living in Virginia.

We have a few of these on the tree as well.  Our niece made them for us last year and we put them on the tree.  They are cards but they are homemade and we really loved them when she gave them to us.

This one obviously isn’t mine as well but I couldn’t not take one of this, it’s almost as old as we are.

Which scares you more?  Another Colts ornament, or the Dale Earnhardt jr ornament?  Yeah, I went through a NASCAR phase.  It didn’t last real long, a couple of season at the most.  I debate every year whether to hang them up, but I always do because it’s sort of my heritage.  I was raised big on traditions.

Mom got this one for me when I graduated.  Way back in 1991.

This ornament says “First Born – Mom’s favorite”.  The joke is, that I’m not the favorite.  That’s one of my nicknames, the 2nd favorite son.  Tony got everything when he was a kid, nice clothes, nice shoes, blah blah blah.  All that is true, but what I’m not supposed to tell you is, I never wanted anything.  It used to annoy my mom because she could never buy me nice things because I didn’t really want anything nice.  I was content in my sweat pants and t-shirts.

You can barely see it, it’s the brown ornament in the middle.  It’s a golf bag, I love to golf.  However, it does not like my wallet.  I used to go quite often but now I just can’t afford to go.  I’ve gone once in the last couple of years.

These are just a few of the ornaments that I still have.  I wasn’t as organized as Cheri is.  When the tree comes down, she will take each of her ornaments off the tree and put them each back in their individual boxes.  Yes, you read that right.  She has a couple of totes of boxed up ornaments.  While it sucks for space, her ornaments are in much better shape than mine.

Plus, I lost some of mine in the divorce.  Put it this way, I moved out in about an hour, and that was walking it all down to my new apartment.  I just wanted out, I didn’t take much.  I never thought about Christmas stuff so when Christmas rolled around and I asked for my ornaments, I got what I got.  Sort of like the baby pictures I had to beg to get. 

But anyways, we got the tree up and it’s beautiful.  Cheri would like to get a little bit of a smaller one, but hopefully by next year we will be in a house and it won’t matter.  We will hopefully have a lot more room.  Plus I’m not sure that she realizes how many ornaments she has, they may not all fit on a smaller tree.  Seriously, 2 totes full, all boxed.

Just don’t ask for any tools, they are in the closet on the left.