Merry Christmas and Happy (almost) New Year!

The “Summer Wife” made it to Winter Break and I have been enjoying every minute of it. We spent Christmas in St. Louis with my family this year. It was so wonderful to be with family & visit with sweet friends. We are getting ready to celebrate (Round #2) with Greg’s family this weekend and are looking forward to our New Year’s Day Christmas with the Teppers.

As I have been admiring our Christmas tree this week, I thought to myself “Hey! Ornaments! That’s something I should share on TheSummerWife.com”.

My mom has loved ornaments for as long as I can remember. She would give me and brother a new, special ornament each Christmas. Many of these memories of decorating our family tree went hand in hand with travel memories. My mom would collect an ornament from each family summer vacation we went on. It was so fun to re-live our vacation memories each year when the lid came off of the ornament box.

Greg & I have continued this tradition in our house. Many of the ornaments on our tree are from places we have traveled.

New York City:

Las Vegas:

Big Bend National Park (Texas):

Fredericksburg, TX: (If you look closely you can see me! This ornament just really wanted me in the picture.)

And very special ornaments from our trip to Europe this past summer.

London:

Germany:

This holiday hobby is a fun tradition that we hope to continue for many Christmas’ to come!