O Christmas Tree Ornaments (Advent Calendar - Day 3)

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is putting up the tree and, specifically, putting up all of our old Christmas ornaments. My favorite is Santa Pooh Bear. I've always loved Winnie the Pooh and Santa. So... perfect combination!

Now, I called these "old Christmas ornaments" and for me, they are (but for perspective, this is old for me, the 25 year old). Many of these ornaments are ones that my parents would put on their Christmas trees as children. I guess when they left home, they took some of the ornaments with them.

I didn't realize how many of these ornaments were from my parent's childhood until I started putting together a Christmas photo book last year (see it here). From those photos I picked out bells, glass balls, wooden figures and more that we hang on our tree now.

Ornaments from the photos below go up on our tree every year. Really, if we took a photo of the tree every year, it would be very difficult to figure out what year it was. A few things change over time, but the ornaments mostly stay the same. We put up the tree tonight and it looks almost exactly like the one in the bottom right photo. And, if you look closely in the photos below, you can find Santa Pooh Bear is some of the photos.

Part of the reason I love these ornaments is that each one has it's own story. Some were gifts, other remind my parents of their childhood; some are from my own childhood; many give hint to popular culture; many of these ornaments could be considered family heirlooms. I look forward to pulling them out every year and adding to the memories.

Wordless Wednesday - Lookalikes

FamilySearch Indexing, You Confuse Me

I've been trying to be more active indexing with FamilySearch Indexing, especially since The Georgia Archive is asking for help indexing their 1928-29 death certificates. I always find that it's easier to transcribe local documents, because you're more familiar with the names of cities and popular family names.

But, FamilySearch Indexing is confusing me. I'll go along for a while, requesting a batch of GA death certificates just fine. The only problem is that I can only download one batch at a time. Then, all of a sudden, GA death certs aren't listed as a project. As I switch views between "preferred projects" and "all projects," I notice that the list changes. Every time I switch, I see different projects, with different projects being given the "highest priority" tag. What's going on? Finally, the GA death certs re-apear. Yay! But when I try to download a batch, I'm told that there are no batches available. Grr.... How are batches not available when it's a high priority!?

So what I'm wondering is: is this a glitch or is this on purpose to keep indexers from staying with one project?

Here are some screen shots, in order, of what I saw when looking at my batch choices.

Charlie Brown Christmas Trees (Advent Calendar - Day 1)

One of the "must watch" shows during the Christmas season is "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Watching this show always reminds me of what Christmas is all about. But, as children, what really stood out were the Christmas trees.

The tree that Charlie Brown picked out was skinny and "wimpy." The trees that the other kids liked were metallic and unnatural. When I was a kid we tended to have nice, full, live trees. So all of the trees in the show were very different than what me and my siblings were used to.

But, these trees weren't so strange for my parents. During their childhood, their trees were much like those in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Sometimes metallic and silver, other times skimpy and small. Here are a few photos of my parents' childhood christmas trees: