Christmakah Celebrations

Welcome back to Taylor Talks!

Our Christmas tree is decorated! No, I don't have a picture yet, but trust me when I say it looks awesome. We do still need to put on some finishing touches, like the tinsel, but it looks great. Isn't it funny that decorating our Christmas tree was how we celebrated the last night of Hanukkah? I mean, we celebrated Hanukkah too, but it was still kind of funny the way we combined the two holidays! It was Christmakah... Christmas & Hanukkah put together!

Surprisingly, none of the ornaments broke on the move down! I was so proud of my wrapping skills when we found everything in one piece. However, just because they made the trip in tact, doesn't mean they made it onto the tree that way. My little sisters were so excited in their rush to put the ornaments on the tree that a few did drop onto the brick floor in our entryway. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

My parents get us new ornaments every year that are personalized in some way. Sometimes they celebrate something that we have accomplished over the course of the year, like a graduation, first car, or new job. This year, my siblings and I received matching ornaments that celebrated the biggest event in our lives in 2015: our move!

On one side of the ornaments, my mom put a picture of each of us from when we got to hold the baby alligators a few weeks ago. As she put it, you couldn't get more "Florida" than holding alligators! On the opposite side, there was a special message. On the top it says, "Anywhere we're together is where we call home." The "O" in "Home" is the shape of the state of Florida. Underneath that were each of our names, and then our new town and the year. Each of our ornaments were a different color on the back, which made them each unique and special for us all. ​The ornaments were really beautiful, and I absolutely loved them... I thought they were the perfect touch for our tree this year.

We always get a family ornament as well, but it didn't arrive yet this year. We'll have to wait to put that one up. But we did look back through all of our old family ornaments, and it's amazing to see how our family has changed throughout the years. There were some that didn't even have my little brother's name on it, some that didn't have the twins... It's also fun to look back through all of our personal ornaments, and see when we were babies or making hand print snowmen in preschool; we've all grown so much throughout the years. And it was really nice to put up my brother's ornaments as well, and to think about him and our memories with him. I haven't talked to him about Christmas yet, but I'm hoping he has his own tree this year and will be able to celebrate even though he's not with us.

I hope that you're all enjoying the holiday season and that you're feeling festive as Christmas gets closer!

Thank you so much for your continued support! I look forward to sharing more stories about my experience with foster care, and hopefully hearing from readers who have questions or similar stories to share. I'm always willing to answer questions and hear about other experiences! Please don't forget to like and share my Facebook author page as well!

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Thanks!
Taylor

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