Andi wrote about her Christmas shopping the other day and provided a photo of the gifts under the tree. Diane commented that she loved how Andi's tree is so "matchy-matchy," and if you know Andi, you won't be surprised in the least to find out that all her ornaments are color-coordinated not only to each other but to her wrapping paper.
Sigh.
Here's an ode to my Christmas tree, what I will refer to in comparison as kitschy-kitschy.
Naturally, we have the Army ornaments...
We even have Santa in BDUs...
We have ornaments dedicated to the second love of my husband's life...
And his third (snort)...
We have ornaments dedicated to my favorite hobby...
And all those ugly ones I painted twenty years ago when I was in Girl Scouts...
We also have the ones that only a military family might have, such as the Polish pottery...
the one from Korea...
or the collection of dog tags. No, I mean real dog tags: every time we move, our dog has to get a new ID too, and the old one becomes an ornament to commemorate where we've been.
Our tree also sports several Homer Simpsons, about six or seven of those "Our First Christmas Together" ones, some grubby nutcrackers that made the round-trip to Iraq and back, and a cross stitch of a bunny rabbit that I made for my grandma when I was a kid.
Also, none of the presents match anything; indeed, the dog has already opened one of them. (Sorry, Heather S, Charlie got to it before I did. He must've smelled you on it and missed you!)
Oh, and did I mention that the tree leans about five degrees to the right? I have tried repeatedly to fix that, but no dice.
So that's our tree. It will never, ever look as classy as Andi's does, but it's uniquely ours, and it tells the funny story of our life together. I'm sure as our family grows it will continue to be covered in an even wider variety of ugly and hilarious stuff.
I just hope I can get it to stand up straight next year.
