The Hyatt family has a lot of Christmas traditions... lefse (a Norwegian treat from Great-Grandma Heller), Christmas Eve, Little Tom Tinker... but I'll focus on a few at a time. Right now I want to do the ornaments. Not only is this a fun tradition, it also explains a little about me!
Every year, Mom and Dad either look for or create the perfect ornament to commemorate something that happened that past year. Every year, when we put up the tree, we get to see our new ornament. There's a lot of excitement involved with this and every year, when we ask when we get to see our new ornament, they ask, "What ornament? We didn't get you an ornament!" No Hyatt tradition is complete without a lot of heckling involved and no Christmas is complete without "ornament teasing."
I've painstakingly taken a picture of each of my ornaments. I have a complete collection now since next year, Mom and Dad won't be getting me one. This is a tradition I hope to bring to my future family. So I'll start at the beginning...
These are the first 4 years of my life. As you can see, there's nothing really special about them or descriptive of what life was like. They're just there to be Christmasy and cute.
This one is one of my favorites, probably number 1. This year, I started a dance class while we lived in Tucson, AZ. I didn't stick with dance (unless you count taking 2 classes in college), but I do remember going to this and I remember the one day I got to wear "the crown." I was so proud!
This was my first year of school: kindergarten! We were still living in Arizona at the time and I loved school (and still do, mostly). I was in a bilingual class where I was the only English-speaking native in there. I learned Spanish and could communicate with my classmates very well... then we moved to Iowa and I forgot everything.
These two are from when we lived in Iowa, a few firsts for me. The snow globe represents when we moved into a real house with a yard, a swing set, and SNOW!!! Mom and Dad weren't too thrilled about the snow, since we didn't have a blower and it was probably one of the worst winters we've had in the Midwest. Not nice of Mother Nature since we'd just barely moved from ARIZONA!!
The bus is because I got to ride my first bus to school. I thought that was a big deal because only the big kids in movies rode buses to school. I rode a bus to school from then until we moved to Wisconsin and the high school was in my back yard.
This was the year my family spent 7 weeks in Seattle. Among the things we did were a small Heller family reunion, seeing my uncle Lane and aunt Patti get sealed in the temple and other things all around Seattle, Tacoma and Arlington. I think this was when I really developed my love of all things Washington.
This year I played soccer. Yeah, surprising, I know, considering how much I complain about flat feet and sports asthma and such. But I played for 2 years. The first year we were yellow and black and the next year we were black and blue. My second year was better, we only lost 2 games, whereas the first year, we only won 2 games. the year after that, I decided I liked swimming and softball better.
These next three were all Washington specific. The first here is Baby New Year 2000. We moved to Puyallup, WA during the summer (that's pronounced pew-ALL-up for all you non-Washingtonians). We spent New Years 1999-2000 at our house with the rest of our family.
The next is Santa riding a moose. This is from the trip we took to Northwest Trek, a wildlife park a little while outside Puyallup. It was our first time going. Part of the park is a tram ride where they show you the grazing animals in their habitat with no fences or cages: Moose, elk, caribou, deer, goats and buffalo. Well, the tram driver informed us it was moose mating season and the bull moose didn't have anyone to fight with, so the day before he'd picked a fight with one of the trams. Sure enough, at one point we pulled up at a part and there he was waiting for us. The driver had just started to say, "ok, if he looks like he's going to charge, i'll speed up to try to discourage that" when the moose charged and rammed into the side of the tram. Luckily the tram's A LOT bigger than he is, so the only damage was a small hole in the side.
This was the year we had a Spanish exchange student at our house for a month. Her name was Bet. I'm the one in the pink jacket with the huge glasses. This picture was taken in front of Admiralty Head Lighthouse, close to where Grandma and Grandpa Heller live.
This year, we went to Disney World and it was like Disney's 100th birthday or something. We went to every park and Megan was afraid of all the rides. Still is, in fact, she won't go on any ride unless it's a kid ride or you force her to.
This is when we moved to the state I still claim as my home: Wisconsin!! Gotta love the cowbell...
Probably my second favorite ornament: my violin-playing blue-and-white BYU cougar!! I went to BYU music camp this summer. It was like a cross between EFY and a music major. We had dances. devotionals, rehearsals, theory classes... The best thing was a Sound of Music sing-a-long. We all dressed up as somthing from there, mostly there was a lot of leiderhosen. I dressed up as Maria in her ugly dress.
The next 3 are just big steps in life... getting my license by the skin of my teeth (i was 4 points away from failing... happiest D- of my LIFE)!!
Graduating high school... My colors were Green and gold, so just pretend that blue is green...
And my first year at BYU-Idaho. Great year. I lived in the dorms with my best friend Kiersten and we had a blast!!
2 left... We moved to Boise and floated the river... SO MUCH FUN!!! the water was freezing, though...
And this year's was our trip to the Oregon coast. We stayed in Newport and went all up and down the coast. This is Yaquina Head lighthouse.
Well, that's my ornaments... stay tuned for more Hyatt traditions...
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