Christmas Traditions - Old and New

Ever since I first heard of the Elf on the Shelf a few years ago, I've been thinking about adding that as one of our Christmas traditions. Jennifer and others have remarked about how much better their kids behaved when they thought the Elf was watching them. To be honest about it, I didn't really want to spend 30 bucks on a stuffed elf, so I just put it off. After the kids kept asking if we could get one, I finally broke down and got it. So here's our Elf:

We named him "Snitch". I'll let you know how it works out for us.

One of our long-standing Christmas traditions is to give each other ornaments each year and to collect ornaments from everywhere we travel. We literally have ornaments (or at least souvenirs made into ornaments) from around the world. I will probably never have a beautiful tree, but ours is special because it contains so many memories. I thought that I would steal this idea from my friend's blog and post some pictures of our favorites.

Jeff's homemade ornament (c. 1980)

When Renee and I had an apartment together, she already had a tree and lots of ornaments. I had nothing to contribute, so I cut out this house from a Christmas card. I still hang it up each year.

I do have some pretty ornaments like this one that I got at a wedding shower. Several of my pharmacy school friends bought me a set of "Bride's Tree" ornaments by Old World Christmas. Each one represents something like "faith", "love" and "hospitality".

This one is a little weird, but I love it! It's from our trip to NYC in December '04.

This monstrosity is what Jeff brought home from one our trips to DC. It's a replica of the lunar module from the Air and Space museum.

He's not entirely to blame for the tacky ornaments on the tree, though. I bought this one for him - it even has lights and sound. The kids love it!

And since the little people took over our house in 2002, we have lots of ornaments that look like this one.

We got this one for Ashley last year since she was Cinderella for Halloween and loves all things princess.

Lastly, no tour of ornaments would be complete without at least one picture from our Hog Tree. It holds many Razorback ornaments, ticket stubs, and ornaments we've collected from other schools that we've visited over the years.