First Christmas

One of the good things about having someone burn down your house is that it gives one an appreciation for home.  This is our first Christmas back in the new house.  

Thanks to my friend Jane who, a couple days after the fire, asked my sister and brother-in-law to climb in the rafters of the wreckage to look for our ornaments.  (I don’t recommend this unless, like us, you have relatives who are equal parts dare devil and mountain goat.) Astonishingly the Rubbermaid totes, tucked in the eaves of the side of the attic that remained, survived.  They were melted a bit and suffused with smoke but we were able to salvage a few of our Christmas things including all of the kids’ “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments.

Christopher

Lydia

And Eden in the little tree at the bottom.

Every year we do a candy advent calendar for the kids.  Of course we lost ours in the fire and I didn’t manage to replace it last year.  When I hadn’t found one by Thanksgiving this year, Eden started cracking the whip.  The paper one to the right is the one she and Paul found the evening of November 30th.  I picked up this cute little gingerbread house a few weeks ago at Kohl’s that has room for her older brother and sister to have a little treat too and she gets to double dip.

You would never know we lost almost all our decorations a year ago.  Some things did survive and I did go into major replacement before last Christmas, and then my mom, who makes Martha Stewart 

look like a slacker, downsized and now it’s as if Christmas threw up in my living room.  It’s a little hard to see from this picture but there’s a flash mob in front of the creche.  The other bookcase is equally burdened with miniature houses and trees that I just set there after Eden emptied all our Christmas boxes onto the floor the day we got the tree. I’m going to pack up everything on these shelves and reassess next year.