Woo Hoo the newsletter is written.. for better or worse it is at the printers. We will pick it up on Monday, and take the mailed copies to the post office. We will email the rest from Starbucks while listening to Christmas music and drinking a hot chai tea latte. (I am in need of some Christmas mood making). But the newsletter is off my plate till the next edition scheduled for May. Now I can think about Christmas (ie. baking) I like Christmas, the music, the family, the food.. lots and lots of baking…My shopping list is almost complete.. I was able to order the last of the ornaments on line this week.

Santa has always brought an individual tree ornament for each of the children. In the beginning. the boys would receive sports themed ornaments.. Little hockey players, hockey sticks or baseball bats. Our daughter would get pretty ones. I thought she would like pretty ones. She came to me when she was six asking why she didn’t get “cool” ones like the boys.. So Santa (we) then began our hunt for little karate kickers and drum kit ornaments.

I have great fun trying to think of an apropos ornament for the year. They are meant to represent significant events. We have first cars, graduations. We have a hockey skate with six stitches painted on it. That one represents the stitches eldest son received after a pond hockey accident. (skate in the head). When the kids were travelling, sports and music themed ornaments switched to little Eiffel towers and

British snowmen.                    

The year our second son went to Australia .. I looked in vain for a crocodile.. I looked everywhere for over a month.. It was Christmas Eve and I had nothing. So I went to the local toy store and bought a rubber crocodile about five inches long. I stuck a needle through its stomach and threaded a ribbon through the hole.. It is the ugliest ornament ever.. 

   Hopefully, when he hangs it on his tree one day he will remember my best intentions.

When Christmas is over all of the ornaments are packed in separate boxes for the kids. They are theirs to take with them … My favorite ornament is a Macdonald’s hamburger (second son’s first job) . When you pull the string it sings “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, onions, pickles cheese on a sesame seed bun” ….. It is cute…

But the ornament with the absolute best story.. is a little teddy bear. When we were camping in the Rockies with eldest son Scott, I was pregnant with our second child. I felt the baby kick for the first time just outside of Banff. We went into a year round Christmas store and the ornament tradition began. We bought a little Teddy bear ornament with the name Scott printed on it..We knew we were going to name our second child if it was a boy… Kevin… So we bought a second Teddy bear ornament with the name Kevin printed on it…

Every year our second child Jack,  hangs his Kevin Teddy bear ornament on the tree….We changed our minds about

about his name.