favorite christmas ornaments

Merry Christmas! I wanted to share a few of my favorite Christmas ornaments. Christmas ornaments are a big tradition in my family. When my mom moved out of her parents' house, she didn't have very many of her own ornaments for her first Christmas tree. My dad came into their marriage with two ornaments. My mom has always made sure my sister and I have plenty of ornaments for our own trees. I have so many, they don't all fit on my tree anymore. 

When we were little, my mom kept track of each ornament we received- who it was from, when we got it, and what box it should go in. I'm not so organized anymore...it's all I can do to get the lid back on the ornament box!  Here are some of my favorites:


This is one of my favorites. It's a glass mirrored pear, and I got it around the time I was born. It's one of the nicest ornaments I have- it's real glass, and pretty hefty. It's always belonged on the top of the tree with the other "nice" ornaments, so the dogs/children/presents don't break it.


This is a little plastic angel I got in pre-school. She's plastic, but can't you just hear her singing?


Christmas at the Zoo ornaments- I have about 20 of these. It started with one little ornament, a pair of penguins painted in teals and whites in 1987. My mom bought one at the Indianapolis Zoo for our family tree. The next year they had another animal ornament, the next year another, and so on and so forth. I now have about twenty of these ornaments- dolphins, whales, leopards, tigers, lions, walruses, seals, giraffes, elephants, and all the other animals from the ark. These brass ornaments take up about half my tree- so much that my mom stopped buying them for us so we'd have room for something else!!


A new favorite- Winnie and Bristow. I didn't have Nellie yet when I took this pic; I need to work on that one for this year!