Leslie In Little Rock

· 33 Comments

Christmas Memories – Our First Christmas Tree

Family· Tales Of A Widow· Writing

Had my husband, Thruston, not passed away suddenly in May 2012, this would have been our 29th Christmas together. He proposed to me the week before Christmas in 1985 and we were married on October 18, 1986, 10 days before my 25th birthday.

Our Wedding Day
St. Andrew United Methodist Church
Little Rock, Arkansas

Two months later we celebrated our first Christmas together. We were living in our first home, a two bedroom apartment on the bottom floor of a large complex in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was an Agriculture Journalist for KARN Radio Station and I had just moved back to Little Rock from Dallas where I worked in Advertising/Recruiting for EDS for two years. Upon moving to Little Rock I wasn’t able to find a job in Communications so I was working as a Sales Associate at Dillard’s Department Store in Park Plaza Mall. I worked every weekend during the holidays and realized that working in retail was very stressful!

I remember coming home one Sunday evening in December after working in the pantyhose department of Dillard’s and there, in the living area of our small apartment, was a Christmas tree, complete with lights, ornaments and red/green/white Christmas garland wooden beads!

My sweet husband had gone out and bought everything for a Christmas tree, including the Christmas tree, and spent the whole afternoon decorating it for me as a surprise! I can still remember seeing the smile on his face when he saw the smile on my face as I walked into our apartment that night.

Because 1986 was years before everyone carried a personal phone with a camera and accessed social media with Facebook and Twitter, I couldn’t find a picture of our first Christmas tree. But I do have a picture from Christmas 1992 that was taken a few weeks before I had our first daughter, Lauren Grace.

Leslie and Thruston Stewart Doan
Christmas 1992

By this time, we had moved into our first house and loved decorating it for Christmas every year. We would get a live Christmas tree and place all our Christmas ornaments on it, including the ornaments Thruston bought our first Christmas along with the red/green/white Christmas garland wooden beads. As our family grew to include Lauren and then our second daughter, Sara, who was born in March 1997, we continued to collect Christmas ornaments each year.

Christmas 1997

In the summer of 2004 we moved into our current house, a two-story brick home with a fenced in backyard in a family friendly neighborhood. The day after Christmas that year we adopted our dog Oreo who was then just a puppy! A few years later, we added our second rescue pet, a calico kitty named Lilly. We continued to celebrate Christmas each year with many wreaths and decorations outside and our beautiful tree inside.

Christmas 2004

In November I placed our house on the market, so this year will probably be our last Christmas in this home. Looking through all the Christmas decorations stored in our attic, I found the red/green/white Christmas garland wooden beads from 1986 and put them on our tree along with the other ornaments collected through the years.

2015 Christmas Tree with the red/green/white Christmas garland wooden beads!

And this year I had the best present of all when both my daughters came home for Christmas!
Happy Holidays 2015 from Leslie, Lauren (22) & Sara (18)!
Post Views: 4,376

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. Tammy Eros says

    Your house looks beautiful, I'm sorry you will have to sell it! Sounds like you have an even more beautiful HOME though…a place of love that can be taken anywhere YOU are!

    Reply

  28. Stunning Celeste and Marie in great girlon girl action says

    Heyy I know thhis iis off toic butt I was wondering iif you knew oof anyy widgets I could addd to my blog thawt
    automatically ttweet mmy newest twitter updates. I’ve beern looking for a plug-in likee this for qquite some tie and waas hopinng maybe you would have sopme
    experience wikth something like this. Please llet mee
    know iif youu run intgo anything. I ruly enjoy reading
    youur blog and I look forward tto your nnew updates.

    Reply

  30. sitemap.xml says

    Write more, thats alll I have tto say. Literally, itt sems as though yoou relie oon thhe vide too mwke your point.
    Youu definitely know what youre talkking about, why throw
    away yyour intelligence on just posting videos to your weblog when you could bbe giving uss
    somethung informattive to read?

    Reply

  31. Graham Cush says

    I haven?¦t checked in here for a while since I thought it was getting boring, but the last several posts are great quality so I guess I?¦ll add you back to my daily bloglist. You deserve it my friend 🙂

    Reply

  32. tlovertonet says

    I like this site very much, Its a rattling nice post to read and receive information. “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” by Epictetus.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

INSTAGRAM – @leslieinlr