On February 9 of this year I slipped on a patch of ice in my driveway and broke my ankle. Within a week I had a steel plate and eight screws in my leg and doctor's orders not to put any weight on it for six weeks. Almost two months later, on my first day back to work, our youngest child was diagnosed with leukemia. Thankfully it's the most treatable form of leukemia, but it turns out that an "easy" cancer is still a challenge.
Even a rough year can't stop us from fulfilling the annual tradition, though. Once again we went to Hallmark.com to order the family's Christmas ornaments. Each child ended up with an ornament, with the three girls choosing Finding Dory and Harry Potter ornaments. With a little bit of prompting from Dad, our oldest boy chose BB-8 from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Originally my wife chose a cute Mickey and Minnie Mouse ornament while our youngest child was going to get Captain America from Captain America: Civil War (in 2014, when he was too young to choose for himself, we got him the Captain America ornament from The Winter Soldier). However, the youngest, who was already spoiled before he got sick, claimed the ornament for himself and relegated Captain American to Mom. This wasn't exactly a great sacrifice on Mom's part since she's an enormous Captain American fan. We couldn't have Captain America without Iron Man, of course, so I chose the latter for my annual ornament.
It's also become a tradition that Dad gets more ornaments than he really needs. I bought Poe Dameron's T-70 X-wing from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, figuring that it would go well with the 1998 X-wing ornament that was among the first Hallmark ornaments I ever owned.
Hallmark tried to sabotage my effort to own every Star Trek: The Original Series character by making Chekov in-store only. Luckily, my own wonderful mother was able to grab the last copy of Chekov from her local Hallmark store. Like my Scotty ornament, Chekov had been the display model.
