Ornament Tradition

While taking down the Christmas tree this year, I decided to find as many of the ornaments that my Grandma and Grandpa gave to me growing up. Every year on Christmas Eve, we would go to church, come home and have dinner and then Blaire and I were able to open up ONE gift. It was always our ornament. I was only able to spend a few hours with my Grandma this Christmas season due to illness (will blog about Christmas later) and so I enjoyed really looking at the 13 ornaments I could identify from them. Most of them are Hallmark ornaments so they have the year marked but some years they would pick out one that wasn't marked so I lost track. I also had already packed 98% of the ornaments away. Either way, here are 13 of them. I have a feeling my great Uncle Bud will be showing these to Grandma...thanks, Uncle Bud! I hope she remembers this tradition as well as I do. Now my parents do it for my kids and I love it!

 Years 1979 (my first Christmas), 1980, 1982, 1985, '86, '87, '88, '89, '93, '96, '98, '99, '03

I am not even sure when they stopped giving Blaire, my cousins and me our ornaments. I know we all received the same one in 2003. The youngest cousin, Kristen graduated high school in 2003, I think so that may have been our last one. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for starting this tradition. Grandpa, I miss you everyday!