Brenna's Ornament and Faith and the stocking

Well, I finally bit the huge bullet! I finally put up the christmas tree. I have had a "naked" (that is what the girls call it) christmas tree in my living room since thursday and today I finally put it off and decorated it. The girls had a great time, they loved looking at the decorations, they don't remember a whole lot of me since we did not put one up last year. I put away all of Joel's ornaments, ones that I bought him, ones he really loved, ones with both of our names on it, they were all wrapped back up and put away. I took them out, showed them to the girls, talked about them, came to tears, then would wrap them back up and put them away. I am not ready to have them on the tree and I guess I kind of want to put them away for the girls so they can have them one day when they are older. They thought they were pretty cool and a few of them they asked to put up, so we did. Before we could get to the tree, I could not find my lights, I know where they are now, but not when we wanted them. So we ran up the road to K-mart and bought lights and looked at ornaments. The girls found these soldier ornaments that are in dress uniform, standing on a rock with a flag and an eagle behind it. They found these and started to look at them and push the buttons on them. This was the kicker, the first song was the army song(or navy/marines....) then the next song was, I will be home for Christmas. I stood there and bauled and bauled. I could not get a grip. The girls really wanted one, but we could not find one that was Army, so I said, sorry...we will have to look somewhere else. Not really intending to, I did not know if I could handle that. Then we found one more Army man in dress uniform, Bren begged and begged for it. I had to let her get it because Faith looked at me very matter of factly and said, "Mama does it remind you of someone?" I said yes it does. Then she said, "well then we HAVE to get it!" That was the end of the discussion. So now I have this ornament in my house, on my tree. I know I will become ok with it over time, but it is just so hard when I hear, I will be home for christmas. Then to top it off, Faith found Joel's stocking. I was getting ready to put it away when she said grabbed it from me and said, "No! WE have to hang it mama, please!" So I decided we will hang it over by Joel's flag box and other "proud of my husband" stuff around it(I call it my shrine for Joel). Then we will write letters to Joel and put them in the stocking and on Christmas day we will tie them on balloons and let them go. I think that will be a special tradition we could do for years.