Dreaming of Great Souvenirs (and my Christmas Tree!)

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On Friday, I wrote about our trip to Wegman’s and why we love the grocery store.  It is a great place to get yummy food from the area you are visiting but it is also a fantastic place to pick up souvenirs to bring home to your family and friends.  That post got me thinking about all the great souvenirs that we have picked up over the many, many years of traveling.  We love souvenirs in this household!  We pick up food items, street art, picture frames, jewelry, books, toy cars…whatever catches our attention on the trip gets purchased and brought home with us.  We don’t need a reason other than we like it, but the souvenir always reminds us of “that one moment” when the trip occurred. 

One of my favorite souvenir collections is my Christmas ornament collection.  We have just about collected enough ornaments to decorate one tree entirely without bringing any other ornaments out.  I wish I had a bigger house so I could have two seperate trees-one for travel and one for other ornaments.  We decorate the tree as a family and each ornament we take out reminds us about that trip and why we picked that particular ornament.  In just a few short weeks (can you believe it is almost Thanksgiving), we will be reliving our travels as a family.  I will get out the hot chocolate and marshmallows (even though it will be 78 degrees outside!), we will eat cookies that I bake with the kids that morning, and we will begin telling tall tales from our travels as we hang the ornaments on our tree. 

Over the next few weeks, I am going to write a little series of posts on the many souvenirs we have picked up over the years and it will culminate with the many ornaments on our tree.  I hope it makes you pull out that picture, jewelry, or piece of art and remember why you traveled to that destination!

Today I had my daughter pick out some of her favorites from our trips.  It is funny how even though she just turned three, she knows that all these items are from different travels even if she doesn’t remember the travel.  As you can tell, Little S usually gravitates towards the stuffed animals!

This is one of Little S’s favorite baby dolls.  She picked her out in a Christmas Market in Salzburg, Austria last Christmas.  She talks about how Opa and Oma were with her when she got it!

This a book that we picked out when Big S was a baby on our first trip to Europe.  It is a book that helps teach numbers to your little one in German.  It has been passed to Little S and she adores it!

These three little guys have a special place on her bed.  The Space Monkey was bought for her by Grandma when we all traveled up to Norfolk, Virginia to move my sister and her family.  We affectionately call this trip the Great Migration of 2009.  We drove up to DC to visit some friends and we stopped by the Air and Space Museum.  This is what she picked out!  Little S picked out the buffalo while we were traveling through Yellowstone.  The whale, Shamu, actually came as a gift from my sister and her kids after they visited Sea World.  Little S talks about going to Sea World one day too! 

Stop by Mother of All Trips, the host of Monday Dreaming, where she is dreaming about a decadent solo trip to Vietnam!