The Year of the Cat Ball

I explain the Christmas tree dilemma and the perfect solution.

So, as you know, Tim and I are huge Christmas Tree people. We put ours up the weekend before Thanksgiving. We work on it together. We plan where the ornaments will go, and we regularly sit on the couch and direct the other person to move things into place so they will look just right. (One of very few things that we perfectly agree on... ever.)

We aren't really artists. We don't have fancy stuff. We bought a few boxes of 10 cent red and silver balls for our first tree, and we just use those as a theme every year.

But one thing we do have is a few new ornaments that we add to the mix every year. I like to buy at least one each year to symbolize something we did or learned that year. We have an L.A. Temple, a Guatemala Bus, an Angel Quinn, A Radio Disney Mickey Mouse, a sea lion, a stuffed poodle and the list goes on.

But I was looking at the tree the other night, and I realized that we didn't have a new one for this year yet. The only new addition to the tree this year is a glass metal that Avery won in the Salt Lake City Cold Turkey Run on Thanksgiving this year. (Tim ran in it too, but needless to say, there are not two metals.) Although the metal means a lot to us this year because Avery is living with us and the metal symbolizes her victory over all kinds of evils, it isn't ours, and some day we will give it back to her.

So, no new ornament this year. It started to really bother me, so I got up and told Tim I needed to find something meaningful in the house and make an ornament out of it because we can't afford to buy one. I started looking around. The final result with Tim's help was a yellow cat ball on a white ribbon hanging from the tree.

Oh, yes, my friends. It is the year of the Cat Ball and for, oh, so many reasons.

1. It is only fitting that our ornament this year would have NO monetary value whatsoever because, let's be real, this year WE have no monetary value whatsoever.

2. Quinn is passionate about balls. All balls, all sizes. But she especially loves cat balls with little bells inside because they are a ball inside a ball! Double your pleasure, Double your fun.

3. The ribbon is from Quinn's hair. Our big girl wears big girl hair bows and even sits still to have her hair done. What a year!

4. This is the year we said goodbye to our beloved cat(s). We bought the cat balls two years ago as a Christmas present for Berkeley the Gray Kitty. They were wrapped, and the cat sitter opened them for her on Christmas morning.

5. Quinn's Christmas stocking will be filled with -- what else? -- Cat balls.

May the year of the Cat Ball bring you all peace and joy as it has to us.