25 DaYs Of ChRiStMaS - Day 17

Day 17 - Stockings

This year, the day after I hung the stockings up, Cooper asked, "Which one is my sock?"  

The answer l to r - Jack, Cooper, Corey, Amy, & Allie

Our first Christmas, Corey & I had no money - like, for real... none.  We had a tree that we cut down ourselves on our friends' land (It made Charlie Brown's look fancy.), and we gave recycled/ used gifts to our family.  (See?  Really - no money!)  There were a few things that we decided to spend money on that year, and one of them was stockings.  We went to the dollar store and found the cutest Christmas stockings that a dollar could buy.  They really were cute, but the threads that they were made with were exposed inside of the stocking, so the things that we received inside of them were almost impossible to get out because they would get caught up in the strings.  :)  I was thankful when Corey's mom made us two matching stocking and a Christmas tree skirt.  (It replaced the sheet that we had wrapped around the bottom of the tree in the previous years.)  On Allie's first Christmas, we needed to get her a stocking, and I vividly remember shopping for just the right one.  I had always loved needle point stockings, so I splurged and got one for all 3 of us.  Hanging them up each year has always been a special thing about the holiday season... especially on the years that we have gotten to add one for the newest arrival to the family.  Now there are 5 that hang neatly in a row from our mantle each year.  On Christmas morning, going through our stockings to see what Santa has filled them with is always a highlight.   

There are also 2 little stockings that I have laying on the mantle to remember our lost babies by.  The Christmas that I was pregnant with the first of these 2, Jack and Allie had hung a stocking up for that baby, and Santa filled it with pacifiers.  That Christmas night, I began to lose that little one and the stocking was a sad reminder to me of my broken heart and lost baby.  I took it down from the row of stockings on the mantle, and every time that Jack got a chance he would hang it back up.  At 3 years old, it was his way of expressing how he felt.  Those memories are sad, but in some way they are precious too.  They remind me of how much those babies were loved and wanted and how thankful that I am that I had the chance to hang another stocking up 2 years later on Cooper's first Christmas.