Christmas Memory of the day!

First off, I hope you each had a great Monday! I know mine was a little hectic, because I feel like my kids are already ready to go on break (and I can't say I am not ready just as much as they are). Have a lot of other things going on around school and I know the light is at the end of the tunnel for the upcoming break!

Well, back to the Christmas memories! This is a "fairly recent acquisition" in the Braun ornament collection, but the story for it goes back farther than the ornament itself. I remember when I first saw this ornament in last year's Dreambook, I knew it would be added to the collection. Not only do Molly and I have a deep love for teddy bears, but this father daughter teddy bear scene has taken on new meaning as Ainsley has entered our lives. Just taking a look back at the pictures from the last 16 months, Ainsley has enriched our lives in ways that I don't think people can understand until they have kids. She is an interesting and confusing meld of Molly and myself and we both marvel every time she does something new, cute, or all of the above.

This ornament also holds special significance because of a particular bedtime song that we play every night before Ainsley goes to sleep. The song is "Waltzing with Bears" and if you haven't heard it before, you need to look it up, and if you have kids, you should add it to the list of songs you sing to your own child. It is always the first song that plays when we put Ainsley to bed, and I wonder sometimes if she even gets to the second song before she is out cold. We have definitely been blessed with a child who loves to sleep! It has also been very cute to see how she responds to the song when we are not at home and are trying to put her to sleep. Several times when we have been out of town, it has only taken one or two verses for her to go to sleep in a strange place.

All of this to say that Ainsley has truly made Christmas a new experience! And while last year she probably had no idea what was going on, both Molly and I look forward to Christmas this year and seeing our little girl light up on Christmas morning!