Travels and (Christmas) Trees

Thanksgiving is over, so it is now Christmastime!  To be honest, my tree has been up for weeks now.  I thought about waiting to put it up, but then I thought about how happy my Christmas tree makes me.  So why should I wait?  I got the husband approval and bam!  Christmastime!

Living in just a bedroom, our tree may not seem like much to behold to the average viewer.  I have been using this same tree since I was a little girl!  There was nothing more magical than going to bed with the Christmas lights on on my little bedroom tree.  Those are some of my coziest memories.  Over the years the colorful lights have been switched to white lights, and my ornaments have gotten a little bit more uniform than all the random things that used to go on my tree.

This year, though, our ornaments have gone back to random!  They are all very different from each other, but I suppose they all belong to the same group.  Travel!

Bailey and I have started collecting ornaments from every trip we go on.  We actually just decided to do this after last year's San Francisco trip, so we did cheat and buy a few online.  In the end it doesn't matter, though, because when I look at my tree I get all the happy feels, thinking about all the adventures we have had since we got married last year!  Here are our ornaments so far:

Portland, Oregon

San Francisco, California

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Yangshuo, China

Disneyland Anaheim (California)

You see, it isn't SUPER consistent considering we went to 3 destinations in Mexico, and countless destinations in China.  We figure, though, that one ornament per trip is sufficient and can represent the whole country.  Camping trips are another gray line, but ornaments aren't super easy to find unless we go to like a national park or something.  So we pretty much made the overall decision to not buy ornaments for each camping trip.  That would be way too many ornaments!

Our tree lacks a star at this point, and I am debating whether or not I should go buy a cheap one, or if I should make it a goal to get a star from one of next year's travels.  My mom had a good idea - maybe we should go to Bethlehem to buy a star!

Speaking of next year's trips... (unfortunately Bethlehem isn't in our near future), this is what we've got coming Spring of 2018:

 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Netherlands

Belgium

Luxembourg

Merida, Mexico

Chichen Itza

Cancun/Isla Mujures

How grateful I am for my travel partner/husband that is okay with me booking cheap flights on the spot!  We've already booked more than Bailey's PTO allows, as these trips will take over a month combined.  And that's just spring!  We hope to get to Hawaii to visit our BFFs Shey and Petro in the fall.  I'm not positive how we will make it work, but I know that we will!  As Seiji says, "we will cross that bridge when we get to the river".

I'm not exactly sure what the goal was with this post.  Christmas or travel?  Nonetheless, happy Christmas season to all!  Also, come travel with us!