we buy an ornament every year.  buy.  it has meaning to the year and the kids have, of late, helped pick it out.

in an effort to be good with our money and an effort to have a meaningful ornament, we went about making our own.  someone (was that you Rachel S?) posted this idea on facebook and it stuck.  if you have ever been moved (physically in this sense) by the military, you know these stickers all to well.  they adorn every box packed up for you, every piece of furniture and every item shoved in a crate.  they document your inventory but more than that, they are kinda sentimental.

i remember sue pardue picking them off my furniture for me, nearly a year after the move had happened.  she was so annoyed i hadn’t taken them all off yet as she took fingernail to adhesive to peel them off.  over time, we just laughed as she found more and i swear she was removing them up to the day we left, three years later.  when she is really old, i am going to go stick them around her house and snicker behind the corner as i hear her grumble in removal.

i remember my kids tearing them off the boxes as the movers were so carefully applying them.  “we are collectioning them!” they proudly said as they handed them over to me.  it was a small stack but still, the movers weren’t so happy with me.  i am sure their words in polish didn’t translate well.

i remember sitting amidst boxes and smiling between tears at the memories we had in that house.  the friends we made, the church we called home and how all of the things we call ours fit so nicely in big brown cartons.  while excited for the destination our boxes would find us in, i grieved saying goodbye while i sat there alone in my thoughts.

so this year, we took those little pesky stickers.  we played “who-can-find-another” all over the house and then watched tiny fingers stick them in the next bald spot.  we aren’t done with it yet but it’s a start.  as we find more stickers, we stick.  as we recently discovered that somewhere along the way, they ran out of blue and started on with red, we look forward to making a polka dot or stripe design around it.  but for now, this is it.  twenty twelve in our new german home with our second-first german tree and our soon to be most cherished ornament yet.  i look forward to the years we pull this ornament out and recount stories of it’s creation, mishaps/joys of the move and memories of our life at this time and in this spot.

and i will leave a few stickers for sue to find!