Ornament Party 2012

Every year my family has an ornament exchange party. It all started because our neighbor and wonderful family friend, Kristen, would invite our parents to her ornament exchange party and it seemed like a truly magical event to us kids. Mom and Dad would slave over creating beautiful Christmas ornaments and then they would go to the party and return with beautiful ornaments that others had slaved over to create. It was so amazing and Christmasy. I always wanted to participate. Eventually we decided to do one as a family and I look forward to it every year. 

Because this is our family and we have a million stories and inside jokes, we think its fun to occassionally incorporate these into our ornaments. So, some ornaments require a bit of an explanation.

This was mine:

Our dad grew up in Tooele and each year we go back over memorial day weekend to visit our grandpa and grandma's graves. It is customary to sing the Tooele High fight song on the drive. What? You don't do this? That's weird. The song starts out, "Here's a tiger to Tooele High" so of course I had to put a tiger on it. I think it turned out quite fantastically. And I was happy my dad won it to keep.

Dan got Joel's beautiful copper wire chili pepper.

This was my dad's amazing carved Santa spoon. We all look forward to Dad's carvings.

Mom made this adorable little pine cone elf.

Beth's ornament was an inside joke and I'm so glad I won it. See, in chemistry class back in '98, there was this kid that asked the teacher all sorts of off the wall questions. One day he began his weird question by saying "Ms. Werner, if your urine smells sweet..." and before he could get any further I burst out laughing. Uncontrollable laughter. I never thought that I'd hear a discussion about urine in 11th grade chemistry class, but there I was.  Ms. Werner, to her credit, remained calm and said quickly, "Ignore her!" Then I think she went on to discuss the topic with this student. But I don't know. I was laughing too hard. 

Anyway, here's my lovely bottle of sweet urine that I get to decorate my tree with. Still makes me laugh to think about it. I also wonder what it was that was making that kid's urine so sweet and what he was doing smelling it.

My kids made these cute little cupcake ornaments.

Clara, or was it Mary? I'm forgetting now, made this cute little clay ornament. I'm pretty sure it was a boat. I'm also sure its way adorable. 

Link and Ash made these cute stilts to commemorate the stilts that Joel made and mastered the skill of using in his youth. But then Courtney broke them and Joel held the split wood in his hands and wept,  yelling, "AW!!! I WAS A PRO!" He was a pro. And now we have this ornament to remember it.

One night in the early 90's Joel and Cam decided to stay up late and record a "radio show" on our cassette player. In order to do this, Joel got off the top bunk and moved down to the bottom bunk of the bed with Cam. The "radio report" began thusly, "This is Cam and Joel, I repeat, this is Cam and Joel. We are both in the same bed which is very daring against Mom."

It was daring. But they lived to tell the tale. And their radio show was great. So is this ornament.

Dan's masterpiece comes to us from a styrofoam ball and a bunch of green feathers he constructed into an enormous bird. A commanding presence on any Christmas tree.

Elston made this cool candle holding ornament.

It was an excellent time with excellent ornaments. Can't wait for next year.