Ornaments

Last night my family and I put up our Christmas tree; something I was not really looking forward to this years since I had lost all my sentimental items in the fire last year.  Seeing as the fire happened right before Christmas, my family and I decided to vacation instead, so this was the first year at home all together as a family and I was dreading having to deal with the loss of the items we no longer owned as we went through our Christmas belongings for the first time.  You see, every year my mom and dad would give me an ornament that represented an accomplishment or personality trait that we achieved throughout the year.  This made all my ornaments very sentimental as I had one from every year since birth.  After the fire, josh had been able to salvage just a few of the ornaments that had been packed in the bottom of boxes, making them protected from the smoke and ash.

As I began going through the salvaged ornaments I was disappointed as some of the cheap and sentimentally worthless ornaments were among those saved.  After about five such disappointments I came across my very first ornament.  Tears welled in my eyes and I knew just how blessed I was.  I was blessed to have these precious items saved, but more importantly, it was a reminder of just how blessed we all were to get out safely.  After going through the rest of our decorations I was relieved to find a couple more of my sentimental favorites and although we lost just about everything, it was a gift to recover these items this year as we continue to start over.