I was cleaning out my old purse last night and came across the key I thought I lost to our cabin last summer when we spent a few days off the grid in the mountains of West Virginia whitewater rafting.
It's just a generic, old-school plastic blue key chain with the place we stayed stamped on it, and our cabin #784 written in black Sharpie, with a silver Lowe’s key attached.
I was about to pitch it, and Chris says in passing, “We need to hang that on the Travel Tree.”
Brilliant!
Lucky for us, I keep the Travel Tree up until at least Valentine’s Day each year.
So, another experience was added to our family tree of adventure last night.
The Murray Travel Tree is resurrected in our master bedroom every holiday season, and it seems to mean something slightly more special with each passing year, as we continue to add our favorite memories of destinations visited.
I often leave this unique holiday tradition up and shining bright through Valentine's Day, because I love the warmth it provides our home during the dreaded season of cold and darkness that inevitably follows Christmas every winter in Southwest Ohio.
Our “firsts”: Santa Cruz & Monterey
I grabbed an ornament on a whim from a little souvenir shop on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz during our honeymoon touring along California's Highway 1 in July of 2000.
And, then another was added from the Monterey Bay Aquarium later that week.
Both ornaments were special to us at the time, if only for being quaint little keepsakes from our first vacation as a married couple.
Little did we know these two holiday relics would come to symbolize the iconic start of an extraordinary family tradition for decades to come.
Our first few years of marriage included several getaways. We marked our one-year anniversary with a vacation to Key Largo & Key West that July, and headed even further south to Cancun that October (only one month after the dreadful September 11th attack on our country).
We ventured down to Florida several times thereafter (and even lived in the Sunshine State for a while!) – Jacksonville and Amelia Island, the legendary St. Augustine, Orlando and Disney, Tampa/Clearwater/St. Pete and the like scattered throughout the Gulf Coast seashore.
We also sailed the open seas on a few cruises down into the Bahamas during these single years of fun and adventure!
And, I snagged up an ornament every new destination we visited.
By the time we moved back to Cincinnati in 2004, I had accumulated quite the collection of destination-based ornaments from our travels. Our first Christmas season in our new home was when the notion occurred to purchase an artificial tree for our master bedroom whose sole purpose would be to hold those precious vacation memories.
The Travel Tree was born!
Unique family memories captured
Sometimes I’ve had to be creative through the years, like the key on the blue, plastic keychain from West Virginia this past summer.
Or, like when we went to Cabo San Lucas for our fifth wedding anniversary and I was unsuccessful in finding an ornament, so I converted a magnet from a Cabo market into one that Christmas.
We have sand dollars that were plucked by hand from the bottom of the ocean floor while visiting Florida's Hutchinson Island in 2016 that are used to “fill holes” throughout the Travel Tree each season. These organic round ornaments hang from shiny red gift wrap ribbon. And, the boys and their daddy often reminisce about filling our bucket with them that hot July afternoon.
Another random favorite is from our first boating trip to Kentucky's Lake Cumberland in 2013 - a red neoprene unsinkable keychain dye-cut into a life jacket.
Some of the boys’ favorites when they were younger were the Disney ornaments - I'm sure for all the "magical" memories the destination conjured up in their little minds from our family vacation there in 2013, as well as the other colorful ones mommy & daddy collected when we visited as DINKs a decade prior. After all, who doesn’t want to commemorate every moment of time sprinkled with pixie dust in Disney?!
They’re teenagers now, and old enough to remember the origins of many of the ornaments that adorn our Travel Tree, like the one from Hilton Head, and North Carolina's Outer Banks, and San Diego & Catalina Island, and Florida’s Treasure Island, and the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, to name just a few.
But, I loved fielding the many questions that would arise each year when they hung ornaments from destinations they had not visited with us, as the tree contains not only family vacation memories, but ornaments from our getaways before they were born, and even business travel we both experienced.
One of my favorites is that round, red glass Las Vegas ornament. Little does our oldest know HE is our most beloved Vegas souvenir from our 2005 Sin City getaway!
Timeless treasures of past, present & future
Much has changed for our family-of-four through the years, including a big move in 2017 to our 5+ acres about 45 minutes east of Cincinnati. But, that tree has remained our constant, holding our precious memories on its branches in the timeless fashion it was destined for years back when I first purchased it.
As our boys have grown, it has morphed into something that Chris and I genuinely enjoy decorating as an “old married couple,” since those knuckleheads have far less interest these days.
And, that’s okay.
He and I appreciate this tree’s symbolic nature, as much as we do the way it lights up our bedroom with memories every holiday season. And, one day I’m confident they will “get it” (when they're no longer testy teenagers!). Until then, we’re keeping the nostalgia and fond thoughts of great adventure close to our grown-up hearts.
Murray adventures of past years. Check.
Murray adventures of the present year. Check.
Excitement for many more Murray adventures to come in the future. Double-check!!
Every destination we’ve been blessed to partake since our West Coast honeymoon is represented somehow on this tree - those of every family vacation, boating excursions, every special getaway shared as a young couple.
Some of them are touristy and make us laugh.
Some are beautiful and make us smile.
Some display photographs that capture our getaways in timeless fashion, while others were created out of vacation desperation!
However each ornament may have ended up on this tree, those that adorn it are treasured family mementos that fill my mind, heart and soul with unadulterated happiness.
And, because I needed a little extra joy a little earlier this past holiday season, the Travel Tree went up a few days after Halloween in 2020. What better way to escape the turmoil of a pandemic year than to daydream of sunnier days - both past and future.
It's now Valentine's Day 2021, and it makes me smile that our Travel Tree is still shining bright more than three months later. Although, last week I noticed its lowest few branches no longer lit. I mentioned it to my 15-year-old, and his response was candid, and admittedly quite dramatic.
"Well, mom, probably because you put it up on Halloween!"
I replied back with a chuckle, “It was like November 2nd or 3rd, thank you very much!”
So, after some consideration, maybe I'll take it down sometime this week when we're all housebound with #winterstorm2021.
Maybe not.
Because, in the darkest days of winter I truly treasure the sacred time spent daily on my knees at the foot of my bed saying my prayers with it shining bright. I look up and thank my God for the memories this beautiful tree holds for our family, and the hope it contains for whatever journeys and adventures lie ahead for us.
Christmas is the season of perpetual hope...especially amidst all that was stollen from us in 2020. And, keeping the Murray Travel Tree up just a little longer into 2021 makes my heart full of peace, hope and joy for better days ahead full of laughter, sun and adventure.
