Let me have a sentimental moment...

I am sentimental. I'm not going to deny it. I cherish memories, traditions and other "special" things. In the post I wrote about Christmas decorations, I said that I was going to share some of the ones that have a really special meaning to me. Well, here is one such decoration.

I am not sure I can really describe why this decoration is so meaningful to me, but I am going to try my darnedest to. Let me take you back a few years...

It was the fall of 2006. The fabulous dude and I were establishing ourselves as a newly married, newly living together young couple. It was nearing the end of November and I began to realize that we didn't have an abundance of Christmas decorations and this would not do! Thankfully, some good friends of ours had given us a Gift Certificate for a Christmas store in a quaint village located about 25 minutes from our home. So, on American Thanksgiving weekend, we headed out for the day to gather some goodies to make our home look like Christmas.

I remember that day so well. Even though we had gone to that village many times before that, and many times since, I remember it as being a special day for us. The next day, we went shopping again and used the remaining gift cards we had at other stores from wedding presents to buy some more decorations. It was special because I knew that the FD probably could care less, but knew how important it was for me to have a "Christmas house".

We got all of our decorations put out all over our tiny little basement apartment and I was excited to share our first Christmas together as Mr. and Mrs.

Unfortunately, when I returned home from school on the first Friday in December, at which time we were experiencing a major rain fall, I found our floors covered in about an inch of water. By the time I made some phone calls and got some people to help (Thanks, Swampy!), the apartment was sitting in about 2 inches of water. We quickly put all of our furniture up on blocks and got everything important off the floor. We stashed stuff on every dry surface, including in the shower.

By that evening, we had packed all of our clothes and linens and headed to the FD's aunts house to stay while we sorted things out.

Don't get me wrong, it was a total blessing to be able to go to M&L's home and to feel as though we were welcome to stay as long as it took to get this mess sorted out, but I was sad. I was sad to know that we wouldn't have a home to spend our first Christmas in and that all our decorations we had just bought were not going to be seen.

I was stressed out. I was in the middle of exams, I was trying to get ready for Christmas and I felt displaced. I was sad.

The FD and M&L cheered me up quite a bit by getting a Christmas tree and decorating it in their basement, so that I didn't have to miss out on that tradition. There are also two ornaments on our tree that have our names on them that M purchased for us that day.

Amazingly, the Lord poured out his blessings on us and led us in a very mysterious way (this is an amazing story that I really should share someday) to finding the apartment we are now living in. Within a week of the flood, we had moved out of flooded apartment, "settled in" at M&Ls, found this new place and moved in. Literally, the house flooded the first Friday of December, we found this place the following Wednesday. We started moving stuff in on Thursday night and we made the "big" move and began sleeping here the following Saturday.

One of the first things I did while my family members were there to help us move and unpack was find the box where I had stashed all of the new Christmas decorations and set to work at decorating our new home. And, M&L brought the tree that we had decorated at their house over to our new place so that I could have a real live Christmas tree in my house for our first Christmas (something I would not have been able to do at our flooded apartment).

Although we were heading away for a week for the holidays and wouldn't even be at our home for Christmas, there was something so comforting about knowing that we were sharing our first holiday season as Mr and Mrs in a place that so quickly came to feel like home.

For some reason, ever since that year, these two snowmen bring back all of these memories of that first Christmas. I'm not sure why, since it is one of many that we accumulated that day in the village, but each time I see it, I think of the journey we took to get to this place - our home - where we spent our first, second, third and now our fourth Christmas together as a family. Maybe it's because I see the two snowmen as representing us - clinging to each other despite the storms of winter. Umm, too cheesy? Okay, I'll stop.

This year, I decided to put these guys right beside my kitchen sink, where I am sure to see it every single day. And now that I've articulated into words the reason this decoration is so special to me, I have a feeling that with each passing year, the tradition will carry on to place these snowmen in a special place to remind me of our first Christmas.

Wow. I just re-read this and I realized how amazingly lame it sounds. The fabulous dude would make tremendous amounts of fun of me if he knew I wrote this. I told you I was sentimental.

This post is being shared at the Holly Bloggy Christmas Bash Christmas Traditions and Memories