This was supposed to be a cute home tour post to share all of our fun Christmas decorations around our house. A little snapshot of the vintage items we've collected over the years and the stories behind them. As I was editing the final photos, this happened.

Yep. It's as bad as it looks. These are the shattered remains of 31 years of ornaments. Two little boys were found staring at me, mouths gaping, unable to move. I'm not sure which of them gave the tree the fatal push, but down it came.

And this was me:

After removing the boys from he minefield, I ugly cried for about 15 minutes, then put on my big girl shoes and cleaned for an hour.

Sweep / vacuum / cry / sweep / vacuum / cry / sweep / vacuum / cry. Repeat.

I'm obviously devastated at the loss of all of our ornaments. I know they are just material things, and things don't really matter, but as we all know ornaments are delicate little orbs that carry the memories of those that gave them to us, special trips, life milestones. 90% of those are now gone and my heart is heavy.

What remains is a random shoe box amount of ornaments (mostly the ugly ones, because they were at the back of the tree...of course).

Silver lining - both of the ornaments with my babies' teeny tiny hand prints from each of their first Christmases survived. I think God knew I would fall apart if I lost those.

Thankfully I have some wonderful friends who sent words of encouragement. I even had donut and ornament deliveries at my house throughout the day, which did me a world of good.

As my friend Kristin said, we can rebuild! I've always wanted one of those gorgeous color coordinated trees that you see in magazines. Here's my chance.

So I press on. Since all of the photos were edited and ready to go, I'll go ahead and share them. I considered making them into a slide show set to Sarah McLachlan's I Will Remember You, but decided that would be a bit melodramatic, even for me.

Rest in peace, Lenney ornaments.