I just realized that these four ornaments represent three phases of our lives. The pink one is a hand-painted one that I got in Wisconsin, while serving with the young women at church. Obviously, the Green Bay Packers ornament came from Wisconsin too. In California (the Bay Area) my Redwood Middle School principal gave each staff member a school ornament. The other one is a hand-made ornament from Crystal B. It has rice in it, commemorating my first Christmas with my fairly new hubby. We lived in San Diego at time. But, I digress.
If you didn't get a box of pears from your mom, you can just collect those stretchy fruit protector thingies throughout the year and use them to protect your fragile ornaments.
Here's the best discovery though. Every year I take my nativities out of their form-fitted Styrofoam packaging and think to myself, "Oh, I'll remember where they go." And every year I spend way too much time trying to get them back into the correct slot. It seems like it should be such a simple task. I don't know why I didn't think of this about 20 years ago. Doh!
Look, everyone is "nestled, all snug in their beds".
I didn't take pictures of Christmas set up this year, but it pretty much look like this. This year the 10-piece nativity above was added to the nativity collection. And I added a couple of reindeer to the reindeer collection.
My goal for the last decade or so has been to "contain" Christmas in four plastic tubs. Here's almost everything boxed up and ready for the tubs.
Okay, it's really 4.5 tubs. A few years ago the light collection got out of hand and moved to a half-sized tub. And this year Santa was displaced by the new nativity. I think that's a good precedent to set though. What do you think?
