De-decorating

Today was the designated day for taking down the Christmas decorations around the house. Somehow, we've accumulated many, many more holiday decorations than I remember putting up as a child. Part of the blame belongs to the mini-Santas. We have an army of them now. They guard different locations ... a few near the front door, some chilling by the wooden reindeer, still others by the fireplace. They've invaded! They weren't ready to leave their stations yet so we didn't even attempt to tackle them this afternoon.

Today was TREE DAY. My mom and I set to work at taking all of the ornaments off of the tree. As I helped her, Mom decided that this was a good time for me to separate my ornaments from the rest of the family's. She had talked about doing this for years; when we grew up, we'd want to have our own ornaments on our trees at our own homes. All of my ornaments, dating back to the Baby's First Christmas collection, are now packed in their own box apart from everyone else's. Apparently I'll really be grown up by next Christmas. In some ways, I'm pleased; I'm looking forward to all that 2008 has to offer. At the same time, it's bittersweet that we effectively boxed up a part of my childhood today and next Christmas won't be quite the same.