Christmas Memories

What Christmas Memories do you have?  I grew up as an only child.  You may have read in my About section that I was adopted as an infant.  I do have a half-sister who I met after we were adults, so we both grew up as only children.   As an only child, I had many opportunities to be by myself and think and dream and wonder.  We always had a nice Christmas tree that I helped Mom decorate, and I loved sitting or laying on the floor in our living room where it was positioned in front of our large picture window and just stare at it and watch the lights shining on it.   I would just stare at it for long periods of time and usually had Christmas music playing as well - probably dreaming of what I hoped I would find under it on Christmas morning!  Mom always had a variety of ornaments, many of them glass that would be collector's items now if they had survived the years and our several moves, or if I had had the foresight to hang on to some of them!  That said, I did manage to hold on to one ornament (not glass) that was special to me as a child.  It is a pinwheel inside a plastic cage and the wheel turns from the heat from the lights or maybe even just the air moving in the room.  To this day, I still like looking at this ornament - pictured above.

As I was decorating our tree this year, a newly purchased skinny artificial tree, I was being selective with what I put on the tree mainly because being slim, it holds a limited number of items.  That said, there are certain ornaments that will always be included in the decorations - along with my beloved pinwheel ornament.  I've included a few of these below, but these are just a representative few.