Our Christmas Tree Star

When I was 8 1/2 years old we moved from San Diego, California to Kansas City, Missouri. We were there a few months, and around the time I turned nine we moved to nearby Independence, Missouri. The moving company had added extra charges and fees to our bill and we were not able to get our furniture for a few months. We sat on wood orange crates and slept on mattresses on the floor.

When Christmas came, we could not afford much, but we had a tree and some inexpensive lights and ornaments. We had nothing to put on the top of the tree, so my dad made a star. It was nothing fancy. He cut a star out of heavy black construction paper. He cut a hole in the middle for a yellow light to go through. Finally he covered the black star with a pretty matte gold wrapping paper (not the bright shining foil wrap, but it had sparkle to it).

Over the years my mom's and dad's finances improved and we added lots of pretty ornaments, but since 1966 nothing else has ever topped my family's Christmas tree.

It's an Aardvark!

I am going to talk about some of my favorite Christmas memories in my next few blog posts.

One of my favorite Christmases involved an aardvark!

One year when my sister and I were in our early teens, I asked her (jokingly--I never really want to know) what she had gotten me for Christmas. She said, "It's an aardvark." For a few years after that, every birthday and Christmas one of us would ask the other what the other had gotten for her, and we would answer, "It's an aardvark." Then, when I was 17 or 18 and she was 15 or 16, I found a stuffed aardvark toy at Sears! Diana asked me again that year what I had gotten her, and I responded, "It's an aardvark." The look on Diana's face when she opened the gift and saw "Artie" the aardvark inside was priceless!