There are two items that are a must in the Edstrom family every Christmas - one is outside and the other is inside. Outside it is THE Deer of Ashburn and inside it is Tim's Gingerbread Man.
Below was the first rev of THE Deer when I found it in my neighbor Rick's trash. I did not ask for permission to take it (Rick later said I am always welcome to take anything in his trash :-) and quickly mounted it on my son John's Taurus (the famous Sun Microsystems $1 million Ford Taurus) John was not amused and ordered it off before he drove it to high school that morning.
Now I needed to find a purpose for the deer and then it hit me, the ultimate Christmas Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer of Ashburn!
It is always nice to see the line of cars several miles long in Ashburn as they wait in line to see Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer of Ashburn :-)
The inside ornament that is a must is Tim's Gingerbread Man. This always goes in the most visible space on our Christmas tree every year.
The story here is that Tim is 3 years old and the pre-school teacher gives out the Gingerbread Man, glue, some things to glue on there and lots of noodles to glue on. It normally keeps the kids busy for 20 minutes according to the teacher. After 1 minute Tim yells, "I'm done!" The pre-school teacher thought this was priceless and was laughing out loud when she told the story. She had never seen one like Tim created :-)
