I figure I should post

But I don't know what to post about. sigh. So sad. Let's see...

My mom gave me a box when we left from Colorado with the instructions "open when you decorate the tree." and I thought, "What tree. Oh....Riiiiiight." So, as soon as we got home and we got unpacked I turned to Shawn and I said "so, can we open this box now?" and he, being the good kid that he is, said "no, we aren't decorating the tree, now are we?" And alas, I had to admit that nay, we were not currently decorating the tree. So I had to wait until the following weekend when I finally convinced him to get the damn tree out of the attic.

So we (meaning I) decorated the tree. This usually consists of me pulling some ornaments out of the storage box and saying "see, this one? this one we got in Vegas. And this one we got in New Orleans. I really like the New Orleans one. I think it's cute." and he invariably grunts and continues to play on the internet. I think next year I'll be able to hold up an ornament and he's going to say "you got that from your aunt Pat when you were 6 years old, and that's the one that you thought was Dani's until your mom showed you the list o' ornaments that proved it wasn't."

After the tree decorating was complete I went and opened the aforementioned box to find a new ornament, and a towel angel.

Behold, the towel angel (made of a hand towel, a washcloth, and a pot holder):
And I'm waiting to take a photo of the ornament for when I get all artsy and feel like getting out the SLR because I can have fun with that camera.

But the ornament does come with a story:
Every year when my mom was knee-high to a grasshopper, her dad always insisted on putting this wooden Santa ornament on the Christmas tree. This was one of those ornaments where you would pull a string and the Santa would kick his legs and lift his arms (like he was doing jumping jacks). And so, when Mom saw this type of ornament she just had to get one for me, Dani, and herself. Of course she also clarified that ours are way cuter than her dad's version.

Of course, the funny part about this story is the fact that she meant to give us these ornaments LAST Christmas.

She went to the Christmas Shoppe last year and found these nutcracker ornaments and liked them because of the aforementioned story, so she bought three. She got home and sent one of the ornaments to me and left the other one wrapped for Dani and decided to put hers away until they put up their own tree. Because Shawn and I got into one of those moods where we put up the tree unseasonably early, I got to open the shipped package as soon as it came. And there was this cute little cardinal ornament. I called mom to thank her for it and she of course asked if I liked how it did jumping jacks. It was at this point that I thought to myself "oh God, this is it, she's finally gone off the deep end." and explained that "no, I'm pretty sure this one doesn't do jumping jacks. Its a cardinal on some leaves." That's when she went and opened her tissue wrapped ornament and realized that when she was at the store the sales guy wrapped the 3 ornaments the lady in front of her was getting (3 cardinals) and then wrapped the 3 ornaments that my mom was getting (nutcrackers). The guy then gave each lady the opposite ornaments from what she had actually thought she was buying. Of course, this is the story associated with the cardinal now--but hey, at least I have stories about most of my ornaments.