Thanksgiving is a pretty big deal in our house. Sure, it’s a four day weekend of over-indulgences in football, family, food and fun (Usually too much family food and not enough football). But for the Isenhour family, stuck in dreary ole Indiana, Black Friday marks prime Disney Time in our house. I heard one episode of the DIS Unplugged podcast covering Disney for the holidays and the team questioned how anyone could have an entire Christmas tree dedicated to Disney. We say, “how could you not!?” This is my first contribution to The Dis and in lieu of a formal introduction allow me to show you how we roll for the holidays.
10 months out of the year our house is no different from any Midwestern house. We learned a long time ago that fewer tchotchkes make for less cleaning so we don’t really decorate that much. You save time where you can when you’re always on the move. That all changes in late November as we break out our heavy artillery.
This is our tree. The picture doesn’t do it justice but there are over well over 100 Disney ornaments up there. My wife had started collecting them before we met and we’ve been steadily accumulating them ever since. I especially love the Tinkerbell tree topper as we got it soon after getting married when we moved into our house.
Everyone we know Most people would say our dedicated Disney tree is a little over the top. That’s certainly a fair critique but it makes us happy. We love Disney and head down south as often as we can. Every year we lament the fact that one more calendar year has flown by and we still haven’t acted on our dream to get jobs and move to the Orlando area. We pour over blogs and websites and play podcasts over and over again to see what’s happening for the holidays. A typical sentence in our house in December usually starts with “Wouldn’t it be great if…?” That’s just us. We do everything we can to live the life of a Disney local from 800 miles away. Our ornaments are an extension of that.
Here are a few fun facts about our Disney Tree:
1. During our annual holiday party, a few of our friends have taken to rearrange some of the ornaments to see if my wife, Alison, will notice. Her personal record is around 2 minutes. “Hey, who moved Bernard?”
2. The only two non-Disney ornaments we’ve had on the tree in 14 years is Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon and, of course, Peyton Manning (both were mysteriously ‘misplaced’ a couple of years ago).
3. We try to have at least one of every character that plays a major role in the movies. I personally loved the Storybook ornament sets and was crushed when they discontinued them. Oh, to have a Frozen or Tangled….
4. We only use Disney wrapping paper (no ribbons or bows as they distract from the paper and my idiot cat Mojo has almost killed himself twice eating them).
![Livin' La Vida Disney 10882221_10152458635025776_5698903338912960658_n[1] 10882221_10152458635025776_5698903338912960658_n[1]](https://www.wdwinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/10882221_10152458635025776_5698903338912960658_n1.jpg "10882221_10152458635025776_5698903338912960658_n[1] – The DIS")
This year, we went all out and did something we’ve been talking about for a while. We got a second tree for our bedroom. This is the perfect place for our expensive and breakable ornaments… and the ones our kids make us in school. We’re not totally heartless! We can now display around 200 ornaments and we could fill a third tree if we had to (although we’d probably have to find Peyton an Andrew Luck.
I just wanted to take a few minutes to share our particular Disney obsession with like-minded folks and would love to hear about some of yours. Until next time, from my family to yours, have a very merry holidays and a happy New Year.
Born, raised and currently living in Central Indiana, I love hanging with my wife Alison and my kids Adam and Lauren. You'll find us freezing and complaining in the winter and sitting outside by the grill in the summer. We always love to meet and talk to Disney Folk.
