Ugly Ornaments

Ben's family is doing an ornament exchange this year, and we drew Ben's mom and stepdad. I was going to make the ornament for them, but I'm just out of time - the Christmas season is soooo busy. So I decided to take the kids to Target and let them choose an ornament for Grandma Go-Go. Dylan chose this one:

I know. It's the dang ugliest ornament of all time. I think maybe it's a partridge?? A multi-colored dove?? I don't know. Then I had Dylan choose an ornament for our tree at home. Guess what he chose?

An even uglier bird. He wanted one "with its wings flapping." You may wonder why I went ahead and bought these, instead of overriding his choices, but he was so excited about them, and honestly, I think it will be funny for Gloria to look back and say, "This is the ornament Dylan chose for me when he was four." She can just put it on the back of her tree every year, against the corner, where not a lot of people have to see it!

Dylan kept playing with his bird, and it started to rip a little, and I said, "Dylan, you'd better stop playing with your bird, or it will break, and it can't be on our tree any more." Ben, overhearing this conversation, said, "No, Dylan, you just go ahead and play with it as much as you want." He wasn't a big fan of our bird. Unfortunately, our bird has gone to ornament heaven. Dylan broke a brand-new snow globe that my mom got us, and Ben was so angry that, in retribution, he tore up Dylan's bird in front of him and threw the pieces away. Dylan was pretty sad. I feel badly for him - breaking the snow globe was a total accident, after all. I think Ben wanted an excuse to get rid of the bird. I think I might get Dylan a new green bird ornament as a stocking stuffer. He misses it a lot.