On my 40th birthday morning, before we embarked on my special day, we took some time to start to get Christmas decorations out. This year, we made an intentional decision to decrease the amount of decorations around the house and only bring out the things that had special meaning. So we had delayed getting our big Christmas tree out, on purpose. Just before we were leaving, we told the kids that we had an early gift for them. They were excited and confused and opened the large box to find a new flocked 3' Christmas tree. So we set the cute new tree up on the island and afterwards, we gave them 3 individual boxes to unwrap, where they found pouches filled with individualized photo ornaments for each of them.
They loved looking at all the different pictures and figured out that they were photos from our last year's traveling adventures. So they realized that this new little tree was going to be called our "Adventure Tree." They liked it but they weren't wow'd. So we handed them one more smaller stripped wrapped gift. They unwrapped it, were confused still, opened the tin, and Addie read the words on the clear ornament.....
... that said "Brown Family's 1st White Christmas Breckenridge, CO - 2019." I will never forget Carter, yelling "What!?? No..... We are going to Breckenridge for Christmas?!" with the biggest smile on his face. Delaney was confused until Carter asked her if she understood what this meant and she said, "No." He said, "We are going to skiing for Christmas!" Addison was quick to ask about presents. Delaney said "I'm going to make a snow man! We will have snow on Christmas morning." It is by far one of my top 3 memories that I caught on video in 2019! Carter's eyes got glassy and he just put his head into my shoulder as tears of joy filled his eyes for at least 2-3 minutes. See, for the last 2-3 years, Carter has been consistent to say, of all our adventures and new places we have gone, the Colorado mountains are his #1 favorite place. He writes about it for school papers and lists it when asked. I love how the kid's don't just assume they are skiing every year and that it's truly a special activity that "get" to do occasionally and the joy that it brings them to look forward to it.
