CHRISTMAS PRESENT, CHRISTMAS PAST

Variety Show - We were anonymously given a ticket to the Shriner's Christmas Variety Show on Thursday night. Miraculously, it was one of the only weeknights we had free all month. The boys loved, loved, loved the magician's tricks. Silas volunteered to assist with one trick and got to go on stage. Fun times! Thanks to the giver of the ticket!

Christmas Celebration - Our church got together tonight for a bunch of Christmas songs and a dessert potluck. Silas' grade school class performed two songs and did a great job. I intended to post a video of one of the songs, but it will. not. load. no matter how many times I try. I'll give it another shot later. The desserts were wonderful, of course. Whoever made the white chocolate macadamia cookies that were in a ziploc bag is my best friend for the day!

Christmas History - During my sophomore and junior years of college I had a roommate named Jodi. We were totally broke at Christmas, but wanted to decorate. We scrounged up some money and bought a dirt cheap tree that we shoved into the trunk of Jodi's car. We borrowed an axe from a friend after a failed attempt at using a sharp kitchen knife to trim the trunk. Then we borrowed a bucket from another friend, filled it with rocks, then used it as a tree stand. Our next stop was Goodwill, where we bought a huge white sheet. We brought it home and cut it into squares, about one foot by one foot.

Then came the fun part. We invited all our friends over for a Christmas decorating party. Everyone brought glue, glitter, markers, construction paper, and an assortment of other random things. Each person got a square of the sheet to decorate with a Christmas theme, then we tacked them all to the wall. We also made decorations and hung them up with paper clips we'd twisted to serve the purpose. Meanwhile we played Christmas music and came up with some food to snack on. It was so much fun!

I've kept one ornament from those years. Actually, I kept two. One was a cow udder made from pink construction paper soley for the purpose of making people wonder why in the world an udder was on a tree. It fell apart after several years though. However one ornament still remains. It's an empty Altoids box that one of our friends smacked a Christmas sticker on before hanging on the tree with a paper clip back in 1995. It's one of my favorite ornaments because it brings back such fond memories.

While color coordinated and themed trees look beautiful, I love our tree filled with a random assortment of ornaments that remind us of the people and seasons of our past.