Tree 11: The big tree!

I love this tree. It is definitely my favorite. It doesn't have a theme, it's just the big tree in the living room.




It's a 9 1/2 foot pre-lit and it's just gorgeous.



It holds all the ornaments that are the most precious to me. I have Hallmark ornaments from the years each one of my children was born, ornaments representing each new house, and photos of my kids from virtually every year since they were born. I have fun ones that the kids and my mom have made for me, and a beautiful Irish cottage with "Langstons" on it that my mom got for me at an Irish festival when we visited Massachusetts in 2002. I even have a Garfield ornament that my friend Lenora gave me for Christmas in 1984. Every ornament has a story, and I love putting every one of them on the tree.


In this little picture I can see Brady's one-year-old photo, a picture of Abby from 2002, two Hallmark gingerbread houses, a family of reindeer that Sierra gave me last year, and a picture of the three kids from last year that's hard to see because there is a branch in front of it (I'm not much of a photographer, am I?), a Claddaugh I got for Thanksgiving this year, and a snowman jack-in-the box from Hallmark.

There's also a brown sparkly/dangly one that my mother and I got on one of our annual trips to the Nutcracker Market in Houston. We've been going every year since Brady was a baby. We both take off a Thursday or Friday in early November to go downtown and spend the day hunting for treasures and rubbing elbows with the River Oaks crowd. We somehow end up buying twice as many ornaments when we go because I go back to get duplicates of what she's found and she goes back and matches what I've found. We also get one or two needlepoint stockings every year to add to the collection.

This is definitely my favorite tree. :-)