Dec 16 2010
Christmas Ornament Travel Memories
When my husband and I got married, we began a tradition of collecting Christmas ornaments on our travels. As a rule, we don’t buy many souvenirs, but we love to find an ornament that reminds us of the places we’ve visited. Now, when we decorate our Christmas tree, it’s full of memories of places we’ve been. Will you take a few moments to walk down memory lane with me?
Ah, here’s where it all began–our travels without children, that is–on our honeymoon to Maine and New Hampshire. It was beautiful there–the White Mountains, the Maine coastline–and there were no mosquitoes. If only we’d had a GPS back in those olden days, we would have taken more backroads to see where they led, and let the GPS find our way back to the airport on time.
For our first anniversary, we visited LaCrosse, Wisconsin, along the Mississippi River, after attending a friend’s wedding in northeast Iowa. I remember eating really good steak and woodfired pizza and strolling along the river. Ah, the good old days!
Our first vacation as a family was to Mackinac Island when our oldest child was 7 months old. It’s where our travels with children began.
Brrrrr! We went to the Forest History Center in northern Minnesota for our son’s fourth birthday. Despite temperatures of -15 Fahrenheit, we wandered around the logging camp and had a real sleigh ride. It’s one of the Minnesota Historical Society sites that we want to return to.
Another winter getaway trip took us to Duluth for our oldest’s sixth birthday. We fought the winter cold by staying at The Edge and enjoying the waterpark. A couple of years later, we returned to Duluth in the summer, where a highlight was watching the Aerial Lift Bridge in action as a freighter cruised out of the harbor.
With Iowa’s close proximity, it’s a good location for weekend getaways. We enjoyed a scenic fall ride on the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad in October of 2007. Travels with Children was in its infancy then and it was one of the first places I wrote about. My, how things have changed since then!
Another Iowa weekend, this time just before school started, and another place that the kids ask to go back to: The Ice Cream Capital of the World in LeMars, Iowa.
The first of our Christmas trips was to Ohio to see my sister and her family, and then since Philadelphia was “only” another 8 hours away, we tacked on a family vacation. Even though they were young, our kids loved the history at Gettysburg. My fondest memory of this stop? Sneaking into the gift shop by myself to find this ornament.
Proof that we need to be flexible in our plans. The Statue of Liberty wasn’t in our original Pennsylvania plan, but we switched things up and surprised the kids with it. It’s still the highlight of the trip for them.
Although most of our travels are with children, once in a while my husband and I get away by ourselves, like when we stopped in the Cayman Islands while on our first cruise.
I took the three oldest kids on a tour of North Dakota in 2009, where they loved the large outdoor sculptures along the Enchanted Highway. Fisherman’s Dream was one of their favorites.
Our whole family went to Wisconsin later in 2009. I don’t know if the House on the Rock was our favorite part of the trip, but it had a gift shop with an ornament. Sometimes they’re hard to find.
Our second Christmas trip took us to Texas in a roundabout way because of the weather. I think my favorite Christmas memory is sitting on the patio of a restaurant along San Antonio’s Riverwalk, eating lunch outdoors in late December with my family.
This year’s entry: Mississippi Headwaters in Minnesota’s Itasca State Park. This was another spur-of-the-moment route change, and it was a perfect Minnesota day to wade through the Mighty Mississippi as so many other have done.
This one’s not from our travels, but it reminds me of home. My husband’s grandmother painted it many years ago, and the wintry Minnesota farm scene is so familiar to us this time of year. No matter where we travel, it’s good to come home again.
Merry Christmas!
Thanks to Sheila Scarborough, whose Christmas Ornaments around the World post from a few years ago inspired this reflection. Merry Christmas, Sheila!
OH I LOVE looking at your decorations. You have chosen some really beautiful ones.
We do the same thing. Long ago abandoned all the “ordinary decorations, and now we have so many that I need two trees. Actually draped a faux pine rope around a big window and hang the overflow there, plus have a 3′ faux tree with all the Southwestern ornaments. The big real tree gets all the others.
I keep a list in my computer because when you have a couple hundred, it sometimes becomes hard to remember each one.
And your husband’s grandmother was a real artist-that’s a gorgeous ornament.
.-= Vera Marie Badertscher´s last blog ..War in the English Channel =-.
Oh, those are beautiful! I try to find ornaments when I travel too. I’m not as successful as you, though!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Linda and Linda, BethBlair . BethBlair said: What sweet memories! (We still can't find ours – since the move.) RT @minnemom Christmas Ornament Travel Memories http://bit.ly/fKPgcv [...]
Love, love, love this post. Thanks for sharing your travel ornaments. My Christmas tree includes them too. My favorites are the ones I bargained for near the Jade Market in Hong Kong. I brought home 5 boxes of cloisonne ornaments to share with family and friends. I kept every one of them
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.-= Donna Hull´s last blog ..5 Things To Love About Santa Fe At Christmas =-.
I feel like Christmas ornaments can really tell a story about a family, don’t you? We also have ornaments from our travels, as well as a new ornament every year for each of our two kids – to represent something they really enjoyed or loved that year. We’ve got cars, trains, legos, a koala, squirrel, deer and more adorning our branches – and I love it! Thanks for sharing something so near and dear to you.
.-= Debi´s last blog ..Anthony C Beilenson Park formerly Lake Balboa- A Weekday Nature Haven in the City =-.
Gosh, I REALLY enjoyed scrolling slowly through these and learning about each place (my knowledge of the upper Midwest, Minnesota, etc. is sorely lacking.) For a minute there, I thought the steamboat was the Coliseum in Rome and I was puzzled by the American flag flying from it.
I cannot believe we didn’t connect while you were in Texas; what could I possibly have been doing that seemed so important at the time? Grrrr. Let’s try again somehow in 2011. TBEX in Vancouver? Need a roomie?
Love re-living your memories with you!
I did one of these posts last year when I realized that we pretty much did the same thing…purchased a lot of ornaments during our travels and enjoyed re-living trip memories when we hung the ornaments each year
.-= Dominique´s last blog ..Zehnders Holz Brücke in Frankenmuth- Michigan =-.
Thanks for the fun stories! I think I’ll have to start this as I usually tend NOT to buy anything from the gift shop as I don’t know what I’d do with it. The ornamnets are a great idea. I have a nice box of ornaments as it was my mom’s tradition to give us one every year in our stockings. Often they were purchased from the places she visited during the year. Do you get some for your kids to have (for the day FAR from now when they move out and have a tree), or just one special ornament for the family tree?
.-= Cathy Spicer´s last blog ..Vintage Christmas =-.
Cathy, I was buying each of the kids ornaments each year, but Grandma also likes to do that, and a tree fills up quickly with 8 additional ornaments each year! So now I stick to the vacation ones, and let the grandparents find special other ones for the kids.
I have tags (squares cut from pieces of cardstock with a hole punched in one corner) on the string of each ornament, telling when and where it came from. Someday when I’m gone, it will help the kids to remember all of the things that are on our tree.
I love the Blue Bunny one! (We have a gigantic Leinenkugel ornament from when we toured the Leinie Lodge in Chippewa Falls, WI one year… sort of an obnoxious thing to have on a Christmas tree, but a special memory nonetheless!)
.-= Arrows Sent Forth´s last blog ..Warming up with memories from the Desert Botanical Garden =-.
What a wonderful idea, Linda! We brought home ornaments as our souvenier from our trip to Disney a few years ago, and they get a little tree all to themselves, but I’d never thought to get them from other places we visit. I think I’ll have to start now.
We have begun to do the same thing. And, funnily enough, I was planning to do this same type of post this week. Now I feel a bit odd doing so…
Loved reading your memories.
.-= Jody´s last blog ..Powermat Portable Charger- This Week’s Travel Gadget… in a minute =-.
We collect Christmas ornaments from our travels, too! So much fun! I’ve got some photos of mine on my blog too, at http://www.toeuropewithkids.com/2010/12/ornament-collection.html.
Merry Christmas!
Wow, you really collected a lot of souvenirs for your Christmas decoration. I think that it is very nice to come home and look at all your stuff. They all tell their own story.
.-= Vacatures´s last blog ..Senior Research Consultant =-.
Thank you for sharing your memory lane. We also began a tradition of collecting Christmas ornaments on our travels. We don’t buy many souvenirs as well, but we love to find an ornament that reminds us of the places we’ve visited. When we decorate our Christmas tree, it is also full of memories of places we’ve been. We also like to find a photo album with the cover of the place we traveled to put all of photos that we took.
[...] Souvenirs to Remember at 500 Places with Kids. (They have the same souvenir idea that our family [...]