Ornament Exchange

We love this tradition!  We do an ornament exchange with our friends (who are family!) from the Italia days...

It really is fun to decorate the tree.  We have so much fun remembering where we got what..from a long time ago, or from just recently.  We take special care to wrap our ornaments every year to make sure they survive storage & moves.  Sadly, this is the first year we've had SO MANY broken ornaments.  I won't name names, but a certain little girl with an amazing reach worked her magic with the tree.

Eri loved helping this year.  Leo helped for a bit, but by this point, she was snoozing...

Eri got so excited when an ornament had his name on it.

This one was from Logan and Eri loved that it had his initials engraved on it!

So...the reasons I LOVE these ornaments from Kian & Jude are:

a) I don't have to worry what Leo will do to it.

b) It's homemade with special effort to color within the lines (can't you tell??)

c) the explanation on the back describes why these are the ornaments Eri & Leo received last year rather than the other homemade ornaments by Kian & Jude's mommy...which got thrown in the trash by Kian & Jude's daddy before their mommy sent them in the mail.  Whoops! (Yes, Tim, this is totally ratting you out!)

Posing with Leo's ornament from the Kellers!  Beach-themed flamingo, to go with our Smith-Keller 2009 Beach trip this past summer!

Eri realized very quickly that it was essential that all of his ornaments went up high where his sister couldn't reach them.

Eri LOVED his beach-themed Santa ornament from Dominic!

He recalled the importance of this ornament & the beach with the Kellers!  He said he was ready for another beach trip with Dominic so they could "skateboard on the waves".

By this point, Leo is sinking...she's bored with people taking breakables out of her reach.  She's sick of putting up ornaments, only to take them down, only to put them back up....NAP TIME!