I didn’t grow up with a lot of holiday traditions. Being immigrants and having a small family with most of our extended family spread across the country and world, my family didn’t do a lot for the holidays. We had a tree and we gave out gifts, but that was about it.

When I married Mr. Chocolate, I learned many of the holiday traditions his family had including real Christmas trees, baking and decorating Christmas cookies and leaving them out for Santa on a special plate, and hanging up Christmas ornaments. In Mr. Chocolate’s house, each kid had their own set of special ornaments to hang up. Many of them were the ones they made themselves from school when they were younger, but a few were special ones bought for them throughout the years to commemorate their interests through the years, memories and vacations. To this day Mr. Chocolate’s parents set aside all of the kids’ special ornaments and wait for them to come over to put them on their tree. I think the notion is rather sweet and even though Mr. Chocolate and his siblings are all grown up, they all wait for a day when they are all at their parents’ house at the same time to hang their ornaments up together. I think it reminds them of when they were small and living under the same roof, dressing the tree up together with their parents.

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Juliet’s ornament in the foreground with Drake’s in the back

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When Drake was born, I bought a Precious Moments ornament that year with his birth year on it to commemorate our newly expanded family. I don’t buy a lot of ornaments as I’m not used to celebrating the holidays and before getting married, I hadn’t had a tree since I was a child. I liked the idea of borrowing from Mr. Chocolate’s family tradition and decided that ornament would be Drake’s special one for him to hang up every year. When Juliet was born I went looking for an ornament with her birth year on it, and found one at Hallmark. It was then I noticed that both Drake and Juliet’s ornaments both had a crescent moon them on them. It happened by accident, but I liked that their ornaments shared something in common, the same way they shared many things being siblings.

Now that Fiona is here, I am on the look out for a new ornament for our tree. I’m not sure Ill be able to find another moon themed one I like, but there are some other lovely options if I decided to try something else.

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1) Christmas Penguin  |  2) Carousel Ornament   |  3) Star/Moon Ornament  |  4) Precious Moments Ornament  |  5) Winnie the Pooh Ornament  |  6) Horse Ornament

I hope years from now my kids will love their very first ornaments the same way that their father loves the memories attached to his.