Ornament Day 2011

Today was our 6th annual ornament day. For those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, the background of the reason the Frantz Family has an ornament day on December 9th every year, I will briefly give you the history. It was the year 2006, and a certain handsome man (Michael) and a certain southern belle (me) had been dating for a little while. He took me on a surprise date before I was to go home to Mississippi for Christmas. We went to see the Nutcracker Ballet and then we were supposedly going out for a nice dinner afterwards, but decided to exchange one Christmas gift early. We were going to start a tradition of exchanging ornaments with each other every Christmas. Well, much to my surprise and excitement Michael proposed that night with a beautiful engraved ornament, and we have kept the tradition every year on December 9th, now including our kiddos in the ornament exchange.

The 2 young Lovebirds 5 years ago

This year was so much fun, because our kids, especially Madeline, had really been looking forward to it. Michael started off with a little family devotion by retelling the story of that night 5 years ago. They listened with wonder, that mommy and daddy hadn't always been married, and he read some of Ephesians 5 explaining that marriage is a wonderful gift God has given to picture Christ and the church. Then we sang "Merciful God", the same hymn we sang together the night he proposed, and thanked God for the sweetest gift apart from our salvation... our family! And then of course the kids excitedly opened their first Christmas gift of the season, their 2011 ornament.

Gloria got a "baby's first Christmas" ornament. Madeline appropriately opened a princess ornament since that has been her "favorite" thing this year. I was super excited to find Rivers ornament because it incorporated his 3 great "loves" of the year, balls, books, and "oo-oos" (a monkey or really any zoo animal for that matter).

I got Michael a Johnny Cash guitar ornament, complete with the ability to play Blue Christmas, because 1)he loves Johnny Cash's music 2)he found out about a month ago he is distantly related to June Carter, and therefore, by marriage Johnny. Yes it was something very big and important that happened this year :) He got me a cute little school house ornament since this year embarked the first year on my journey of homeschooling.

We ended the night with family movie night, something we all look forward to, with the works... pizza, The Polar Express, and brownies. Such a fun way to celebrate a day that we consider its own holiday around here! Oh how much has changed in these 5 years! Thank you Lord for this sweet sweet gift! Happy Ornament Day!