Looking forward

We didn't go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. (You couldn't pay me enough to fight those crowds!) Instead, we stayed home and started decorating the house for Christmas.

Some of you remember that in August, when my grandmother started to become seriously ill, I went to Ohio to visit her and started to bring home some of the family heirlooms that meant a lot to me. One of them was her and my grandfather's 1960s tinfoil Christmas tree, which I've always loved.

The s.o. and I put the tree up yesterday. For me it was a little tough, because Nana died on October 26 and I will be traveling to Ohio again next week for the memorial service. It was her time to go, but that doesn't change the fact that Christmas won't be the same without her around.

But it's hard to be melancholy for long in the presence of a tree that's straight out of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The tree brings back so many happy memories, as do the ornaments (many of them homemade--several by Nana--and all of them treasured). One of my favorites is a foil-backed Shrinky-Dink of a partridge in a pear tree, which was part of a set my mom and I made when I was little. I have no idea what happened to the rest of them, but the partridge was always my favorite and I'm glad I have it.*

The s.o. and I have decided that we need to find or make a new ornament to commemorate 2005, but we're still trying to figure out what exactly it should be. It will probably just "happen," as these things do.

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* The ornament in the picture is a little bit of an oddball--it owes its existence to the fact that one of my stepmothers used to work in sports marketing. But for some reason the s.o. and I especially like it.