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For the past several years, I’ve been buying the annual Christmas ornament from the White House Historical society. I began collecting when I bought my townhouse in Virginia. One of my coworkers used to take orders for the office. Since then, I’ve kept up the tradition and bought them to remind me of my DC Christmases. Jeff and I like the historical themes. Each ornament honors a former president, and includes a discussion of life in the U.S. during that president’s term. The ornament to the left is the first I collected. The one below is one of my favorites.

My prayers are with my Uncle Penn and his family today. Growing up, I viewed Penn as a strong man and a role model of subtle wit and kindness. After I became a Virginia Tech Hokie, Penn never missed a chance to poke a gentle finger after a Tech defeat at the hands of his University of Virginia Wahoos. Today, Penn just feels far away, but ever present in my thoughts.

I don’t normally cross-promote the Strangers Among Us group blog (even though I think there are some really fun photos and stories there). But today, I want to tip my hat to one of my fellow Strangers contributors, who brought former President Carter to our little blog party. How very cool.

On a tree filled with glass decorations, one of my favorite ornaments is fake glass. I fondly remember making these pseudo stained glass ornaments with my mother and brother in the house where I grew up. In those days, our tree was mostly filled with things that Cliff and I made–blobs of felt, handmade frames with school photos, and melted stained glass. When Jeff and I spent our first Christmas together in San Francisco, my mother sent this ornament along to help start out our new tree.

I never thought that I would be one of those “ornament collectors”, but each year when Jeff and I pull out our boxes of ornaments to decorate the tree, I am taken back to trips we’ve been on or font memories of family members. So, since most of my rabid readers are not in SF, I thought I would share a few of the stories that our tree tells.

I thought I would start with one of our most recent additions. This glass ornament is one of four we brought home from Venice this year. We chose these, because they illustrate a classic Murano glass style where cross-sections of intricate glass rods are fused and shaped. We found this particular ball on the Venetian island of Murano, where a glassmaker described the uniqueness of each piece and how the different colors and shapes are achieved.