Remembering Christmas Past

The next three days, I’ll be sharing my “A Christmas Carol” moments with you – Remembering Christmas Past (appropriately on #TBT), Enjoying Christmas Present, and Looking Forward to Christmas Future.

I was recently approached by an artist and her team who likes my blog (thanks guys!!) asking if I’d check out their website and see if I’d be willing to share.  Not only was I really impressed by her art (WOW!), I liked the writing prompt – to share photos of family memories at Christmas time.  I decided to take it a step further, and use one of her ornaments to inspire my writing each day of this set.

Let me introduce you to “Thaddeus.”  Isn’t he just adorable?
This lil hand-crafted penguin is $17 and available here.

And where did Thaddeus take me in my Christmas memories from the past?  To the year 2002, when Tulsa, my home town, became flooded with penguins – of the huge variety – as the Tulsa Zoo prepared to build a new penguin habitat and needed funding.  Ginormously huge penguins were crafted, and decorated, and placed in front of stores all over town.  Then, they were auctioned off to the highest bidder, thus raising money for the Zoo exhibit.

In our usual go-all-out fashion, my mom and I drove all over town on my Thanksgiving and Christmas break from my freshman year of college… and just as though we were back in the day of collecting those Teeny Beanies from McDonalds Happy Meals, we hit up every penguin we could find (with a carefully marked map in hand) and proceeded to take pictures with every single one.  That was a LOT of penguin-graphing, and such fun times in the car with mom, mapping out the best route to the next penguin.  Many of the penguins have started to disappear – as their highest bid winners have moved them – presumably indoors.  But you can still see the penguins in random places around town, and when we’re “back home,” and I happen to drive by a penguin, or when I see one like this Thaddeus ornament, they always make me smile, as I remember that crazy Christmas when mom and I raced all over town to see if we could see every single one.

Thanks, Mom, for keeping these pics and send them to me!  I figured the best way to show them would to be a collage of all of them instead of picking just one or two to share.

Author: travelwchristy

I am a SPED Paraprofessional who is mom to three beautiful children, a wife to a fabulous man, and blessed beyond compare! View all posts by travelwchristy