Memories hang here

A blogging friend inspired me to share about some of the ornaments on our tree. I like looking at other people's trees and figured this would be a good way to document ours. So, come along, on a virtual tour of what's hanging on the branches of our fat, unshaped real tree I love.

I love collecting ornaments while traveling.

My mother-in-law gave us this in 2009 as a memento from our trip to Texas that July.

That's made in New Zealand, where we went in August 2009.

Gran-Gran gave these to the kids in 2010. We had gone to Branson in October and part of our vacation was seeing "Noah" at the Sights and Sounds Theater.

Us adults got this one from the same Branson trip.

I love this ornament from Chicago. We went in September 2010, but it's a new addition to the tree this year because we only put up a small tree last year. I was worried that Ben would try to climb it last year. So far so good this year, although I keep a close eye on him.

Several ornaments came home with us from Maine this fall.

Cate picked out this lobster one and I love it. The store there personalized it for us.

This one is made out of Maine lobster, crab and mussel shells.


And, of course, we brought an ornament home from Boston this fall too.

The handmade ornaments from Cate are among my favorites too. She is 4 years old. And really into crafts. She's brought home four handmade ornaments from school already, and she still has a week and a half left before Christmas Break. And that's not even counting the ones she made last year.

We -- although mostly Cate -- made these last year for relatives.

That's our family, apparently.

And we can't leave out baby Jesus' family.

Ornaments that document moments in our lives are good too. We have one commemorating our first Christmas as a married couple. And then there are these, which I love ...

Peggy {my mother-in-law who is better known as Gran-Gran around here ...} is a great gift-giver. She had these ornaments made for us in 2002 {the only Christmas we lived in Lexington} and 2003 {our first year in our first Murray house}.

No worries, Ben has a couple "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments too. He was born a month before Christmas, so he actually has more baby ornaments than Cate. They were great gifts to get!

Isn't this sweet? {Again, courtesy Gran-Gran!} Cate became a big sister in November 2009.

I like dated picture ornaments too. I'm sure this doesn't surprise any of you. On my to-do list is finding ones for this year.

Our childhood ornaments are fun to have, especially now that Cate likes to hear stories about them.

That's me. And I think this specific ornament was in a box my grandpa gave me after my grandma passed away in 2001.

And, obviously, that's from Greg's first Christmas.

What's your favorite Christmas ornament? Do you have a themed tree or is it a hod-podge of memories like ours?
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