That funny ornament!

I have this amazing friend named Christine. Here's a picture of the two of us: Except, you can't see our eyes. How about this one: Except, she hates that picture because she lost a lot of weight after that, but that's all I have of the two of us, so here's a great picture of just her! She's beautiful, huh? Well, Christine is adopted family. She treats my kids like they are her grandkids and me kinda like a daughtery sorta best friend. I love her. We get together every Monday night for Family Home Evening and trade off with going to her house and mine. This week was the week to be at my house. Our activity was tree decorating. The tree turned out beautiful, see.... Christine knows that all the ornaments in our collection are special, lots are homemade, but all of them are sentimental for some reason or another. We have, homemade photo ornaments, like these:
We also have ones other people have made us, like this one from my friend Sallie who has passed away. I never took off the wrapping or her gift tag. Sentimental.
And ones that aren't even traditional for a Christmas tree, like the Star of David because in my daughter's preschool class was a Jewish boy, they celebrated the customs and religious differences of all people, and Leila made this in her class. I keep it on my tree to remind my kids to appreciate the differences of others. Some funky ones too, like this one that Christine pulled out and wondered what in the heck it was, but knew it must go on the tree because, you know, they're all special and sentimental. It's the Inn. Where Joseph tried to get a room for Mary. I made that ornament, and I love it! She put it on the tree. Then she pulled this one out of the ornaments box. She looked at it quizzically. She turned it over a time or two and with a shrug of her shoulders, she placed it on the tree.

I watched it all happen. It was only a few seconds and she was going to go on to the next ornament when I erupted in laughter causing quite the confusion amongst all of my kids. Christine knew I must have been laughing at her because of that funny ornament, so she laughed too, not knowing why. So...all the kids wanted to know what was so funny. Did you know it's hard to talk intelligently when you're busting a gut? Well, I finally stopped laughing long enough to show them the new and strange ornament that was placed on the tree and the waves of laughter started all over again. I said, "Christine wins the prize for my LOL of the day!" I took the light tester off and put it in the Christmas tree box and we finished decorating with smiles on our faces and Christmas in hearts....

But later after Christine had left and I couldn't' stop smiling about that funny ornament. I went and pulled the light tester out of the Christmas tree box.....and I put it back on the tree. It's a great memory after all, just like all our other ornaments. Sentimental!