The History of the Hash Tree...not what you think.

        I love Christmas. I mean who doesn't? The family traditions...the lights...the shopping...the gifts...celebrating the birth of our Savior. All wonderful!  Another special thing about Christmas is that is the day...long ago in another millennium...1997 to be exact...that Ryan and I became an official couple.  But more about that later, if you're good :)

        One really cool thing about family traditions is that you can add to them! When Ryan and I got married we were so excited to celebrate our first Christmas. His brother was born December 19th, and they had a strict rule in their family that no decorating for Christmas could take place until after his brothers birthday was over. So that only left 5 day of tree enjoyment before the big day! Eek! Ever since I've been around his family his mother has been less than enthused to decorate....and they have this one tree with it's matchy matchy bows and ornaments. Pretty, but where was reindeer ornament made from clothes pins and fuzz balls? Where were the fun ornaments that spun and moved? OK...so that might have been a spaceship from Star Trek on my own families tree...but anyway...you get the point.  And don't get me wrong, I love perfect Christmas Trees that match...I look at them in the store and aspire to have one one day when I'm older...but maybe if you have more than one tree. Perhaps it was Ryan's mother's way of dealing with a house of all boys.

       Now my family. My family usually decorated around two weeks before Christmas...whatever day we didn't have a swim meet. We lugged all of the boxes out of the basement, and then gleefully added all of our colorful, aged, meaningful, hodge podge ornaments to the tree. I loved it. For a few years my mom did have a "fancy tree" in our bay window of our living room with very beautiful, very breakable ornaments. I'm pretty sure I broke at least one a year. We all did. But it was so pretty. Needless to say there aren't enough of those glass ornaments left to make a entire tree...so now they're added to the regular big tree.

        Ryan and I pretty much knew we were going to get married from the start, so when we were 19  I implemented a tradition that each year at Christmas we would give each other an ornament that could go on our future tree. So now it's November 05 and Ryan and I are getting so excited for our first Christmas and we start talking about how other families decorate the tree Thanksgiving weekend and how neither of our families EVER let us do that. So that's exactly what we did, we went out Black Friday and got a great deal on a artificial tree. (Apartments typically don't let you have live trees due to the fire hazard).

        As soon as we got home we put it up and decorated!  We added all of our ornaments that we had collected over time. But of course it was still sparse. At that time we lived in walking distance to a Target...and this is before we lived a very budgeted life....and oh we had so much fun picking out new ornaments!  Except we only got a few at a time, and every time I was at Target I would find more I just HAD to have. It was great. Our tree was no where close to matching!
        
         Enter in the kittens....oh did I forget to mention at the time we had two 7 month old kittens? Adorable. But guess what they liked to do? Climb the tree. Sit in the tree. Bite the tree. Bat ornaments off the tree. Bat said ornaments under furniture for us to find months later when we moved. That first year we tried so hard to keep them out of the tree...we even moved the tree to our bedroom so we could shut the door when we left for school and work. By the second week of December we were so over protecting the tree from the cats...they seemed to have more fun that we had ever seen them have! And so I gave in and took precious pictures:

               I know what you're thinking. "Sarah, why would you put feathers in your tree if you had baby kitties?" Well...I love birds. I don't have pet birds because of the cats, so instead I get bird ornaments and put them in my tree. I'm sure they would be in the tree with out the birds!  Besides the entire cat in tree thing, Ryan and I went into full speed ahead Christmas mode...but by 3 weeks in we were over it, and started to think our parents may have had the right idea with waiting to decorate and drink all the eggnog. I know, I know...I said it..my parents were right.

        So by 2006 we were in SC and decorated in between final exams. I wouldn't have had the time to celebrate Christmas for 5 weeks even if I had wanted to. One day we actually had time to decorate

and I start opening the Christmas boxes...except it was only village pieces and around the house items...no ornaments! WHAT!? We remembered to pack everything in our move except the ornaments?? Surely it couldn't be. So I called my mother who with phone in hand ventured into her basement to open random boxes. And she found them. All of them. I was upset...I mean earlier in the year our Christmas tree that we had bought the previous year had met it's demise. A flood. See, my sister and I store many things in our parents basements...but it floods. So the tree was in its cardboard box and it got wet, and moldy-- it died.

          So Ryan and I had already bought a brand new artificial tree (they aren't cheap) and now we had to go buy new ornaments too! I wasn't going to not have a Christmas tree. So we ventured out to..where else...Target! My husband asked me if we could do a theme, because it might be the only year we could have a matching tree. Ha. Who knew he actually liked the matchy matchy? So we picked something simple---silver. We bought silver balls with different textures,snowflakes, some tinsel, and a silver star. And come on, we all knew the little balls were going to be cat toys in less than 60 seconds.

             In 2007 we actually got a lot a time off from school and work and headed back up North for the holiday. to save money we got a classmate to feed and play with the cats instead of boarding them. We couldn't take them with us because um..have you met cats after an 8 hour drive? I rather not. We actually decided to decorate our place with everything except the tree.  We couldn't leave the cats unattended with the tree for 14 days. Nope. No can do. So another year went by with out seeing our original ornaments.

                Now in 2008 we were in VA and we had our tree! and our ornaments! after 3 years! Ryan and I were reunited....and it felt so good...but you should have seen the cats! Jumping in the box and chewing on the branches right away. Rolling around like we had given them cat nip...I swear they had smiles on their faces. So here we were, our little fur family all so excited. Samus literally dove right in...

                     By then I had totally given up on fighting them off or reprimanding them and I just took pictures. Maybe I'm a bad cat Momma. I don't know. But I learned and throughout the year when I came across a stray ornament I had a special bag to put them in that actually got put back in the Christmas box while we were packing and moving.

                   And that brings us to Christmas 2009. We're in yet another new home and a new state. We have our tree, our ornaments, our fur babies with tails, and we live near family again--should be another great year!