When our kids were little they would sit for hours looking at the ornaments. They knew the stories behind each and every ornament. They knew how traumatized we were the year the tree fell over and broke some of the precious glass ornaments that had hung on their Daddy's tree as a little boy. And they remember THAT being our last "real" Christmas tree. And that's what brought about the tree from Sears. It was 1989, our youngest, Tyler, was 9 months old. My friend Angie and I and Tyler were shopping the after-Christmas sales and came upon a fully decorated floor model Christmas tree at Sears that had been marked down several times to $150.00! Without even talking to Randy, I bought it! That was so not me. They told me to give them a couple hours to take it down and box up everything. Later as they helped load it all into my van they kept throwing in boxes of lights, bags of garland, packages of ornaments, a new tree skirt, extention cords... this was over and above what came with the tree! Why were they being so generous? Well, that Sears closed a couple months later because they had plans to level the entire Mall the next year! I'm thinking they just wanted everything gone! We later calculated my impulsive purchase as retailing close to $1000.00! And after 17 years, we still think it's the most beautiful tree!
Every year when we decorate the tree as a family, we retell those stories, laughing till we're in tears... recalling the year that Tyler insisted on hanging a glow-in-the-dark Halloween bat on our tree... which we now affectionately call the Christmas Bat. We adopted these funny looking space-age glass ornaments from Randy's Aunt Evelyn, that Miranda dubbed Battlestar Galactica ornaments. They would probably bring us a chunk of change on Ebay, but our tree wouldn't be the same without them.
Shawn's favorite is the Sugar Bear ornament that came free in a box of Sugar Smacks cereal in 1990. You squeeze the bear's tummy and it plays Jingle Bells. Well, last year the music stopped. Poor little guy... so we gathered around Sugar Bear and performed open tummy surgery... I opened his tummy... Randy removed the old battery... Shawn replaced it with a new battery (which cost $8.00!)... I sewed him back up and he was as good as new! Sugar Bear lives on. Shawn is now bidding for a Sugar Bear on Ebay so he and Nicole will have their very own... the tradition lives on.
those are such great stories .... and great pictures ... although Shawn and Miranda have a bit of a vacant look on their face ... :) ...
ReplyDeleteI have a lot more ornaments than Andrew from growing up, so we've been trying to get more together ... we got this great one when we went to the Grand Canyon ... I'll post about it when we get the tree up ...
Love the stories of Christmas ornaments! Since we got married in December, Terry's mom gave us a huge box of unique ornaments that she'd been collecting all year. It was one of our favorite gifts! Now we have Sesame Street, Wizard of Oz, even ET ornaments. I'll blog more too when I get the tree up after our construction is done. Can't wait. You're giving me lots of good ideas.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the great memories... it's such a wonderful time of the year!
ReplyDeleteI really cherish the vintage ornaments my grandmother had on her tree. Such good memories of spending each Christmas with the whole family. I have been collecting vintage & new ornaments for about a year and have put together a few Christmas trees with my own little flair. I'm selling 2 trees which I've posted on my blog, but I think I'll have to keep my favorite ornaments for myself!
ReplyDeleteLast night, sugar bear flat lined at the hands of my daughter after 32 years! We have gathered the right surgeons and his repair is scheduled to take place. Do you know what battery was required? He got stuck on the first 2 bars of jingle bells and wouldn’t stop. I am devastated—but we shall overcome!
ReplyDeleteI think I saw your tik tok 😆
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