I always have a hard time finding that perfect gift for some people. My girls are normally pretty easy to find something they will totally love. Robert on the other hand, I hate to say, I have stopped trying. One year I saw a brilliant idea in the "Family Fun" magazine. It was like "365 reasons why I love you" is what they called it if I remember right. It was an idea of a reader that wrote in and shared her idea. The reader bought a desk type calendar and then put one reason on each day why she loved her husband. I thought that would be a really thoughtful and loving reminder of how much Robert means to me and how I truly depend on him. I knew he wouldn't really want a desk calender since he has his Palm or he did at the time, and he most likely had some calendar at work on his desk too. So I got a little spiral notebook that I thought would be small enough to sit on his night stand on his side of the bed. I then wrote a little note in the front of it telling him how grateful I am for him and all those heartfelt feelings you normally write in a card for someone you love. I started off the year having a day on each side of the page, so when you opened any particular day it would have for example having Thursday July 7th on one side of the page and Friday July 8th on the other side of the open book. So I spent hours thinking up of ideas, real reasons and crazy things to fill in the blanks a little too. Like, "I love you so much I would go bungee jumping with you again even though I am afraid of heights!" or "I love that you don't sleep with a gigantic pink teddy bear" and then also I wrote in some with real heart felt reasons and things that brought back memories (for me anyway) of us dating or things in our past. I also put all our family birthday's on the calendar and all the holidays. I thought it was a great idea, I think Robert used it up to like Jan. 7th of that year. He did scan through it a bit, but I was rather disappointed in the gift I thought was such a great idea and everything. Well, that is how I feel many of my gifts end up like. I think they are really great and the receiver is only slightly grateful or I come up with some lame unusable gift or some unwanted item. Which then sometimes I think it would be better to not give anything.
This past year I was trying to think of something to do for my parents for Christmas. I decided to have their old super 8 films transferred onto a DVD. Although it was more money than I had thought it would be, once I started I couldn't see not just doing all of it. The films were split into two different time frames I guess. One being my immediate family films (although they stopped making movies shortly after my sister just older than I was born, so I am not on ANY of them) and then there were some films of my mom's grandparents (which were really I think 16mm film). They had tons of film of when my mom was a little girl and her parents and all. It was great to see them.
I went up to WA for my twin brother's blessing of his new son. It happened perfectly that I was also there for our family Christmas party which normally I miss since I am too far away and traveling in the winter is too dangerous in my opinion. Our family typically gathers the weekend after Christmas for their family party. This year I happy to be a part of it since I was up there. We do a grown up gift exchange, everyone brings a gift under a set dollar amount and then we do the draw numbers kind of thing and unwrap a gift or take some one's gift they have already unwrapped kind of thing.
I was trying to think of when I would give my parents their videos but I wanted to wait for everyone else there since everyone else helped finance the project. For the gift exchange I brought a gift bag with some microwavable popcorn, candy, 2 liter of Soda, a jar of nuts, and then I put that Video in there for my mom. I figured who ever got the gift would know it was Mom's and I would give them their copy of their video and my mom would get the one that was all fancied up. My number was 3 so I was trying to debate on getting the movie bag and revealing its contents to get my mom wondering about it. Instead I knew my brother had just wrapped up my sisters new glue gun she just got from one of my other sisters. I chose the glue gun just to stir things up a little and have my sister Lorri wondering if that was really her glue gun or not. (Of course when I opened it she said, "Oh I got one just like that... or is that mine? Scott is that my glue gun?" Yes indeed it was her glue gun, my brother Scott is crazy like that. (Many times for Christmas he would go into my room find a pair of shoes of mine or some clothes and wrap them up for me for Christmas. It was one of those thought, wow, I have a shirt just like this one, wait this is my shirt!)
When my mom's number was up, she went right of the gift bag of my stuff. She knew it was my bag since I got the bag from her Christmas box of stuff. She was sorting through the bag... looking at the soda, popcorn, candy peanuts, and then pulls out this video that says "Frack Family Videos" on it. She is looking at it and on the cover were pictures from the video, some of her and her parents, or her grandparents, or her sister and what not. As she recognized herself in a few of the pictures, she asked me where I got it. I replied, "it is amazing the things you can find on Ebay!" She was still stumped by the video. It couldn't have worked out better, with her taking the bag with the video in it. She finally figures out what the video is of and was just looking at it thinking the whole time from what I perceived.
It turns out in my opinion, this video was the perfect gift! As she watched it, she saw her parents who have been gone for along time, her grandparents, and then her siblings too. It was also perfect too, because when we started the process of the videos I wasn't planning on being there for Christmas, but with my new nephew it all came into play nicely. I was glad I was there to see my mom's face as she watched her movies of her family. I knew I did good at finding the perfect gift this year! Now I have to start thinking on what to do for next year.
3 comments:
What a treasure!!! & What a great thing that you were able to be there when she opened it!!! I'd love to do that for my family one of these days. How did you go about doing it? Did you just send everything to somebody to get it done? If you don't mind I'd LOVE to get some info!!
That is so cool. I have been wondering what it would cost to put my 8mm tapes onto a DVD. Is it alot? I think all my 8mm tapes are like 8 hours each. I did the coolest thing for Andy this year for Christmas. I took all of his slides from his mission and put them on a cd for him. There was 136 slides and I could not wait to give it to him. I was hoping for the perfect reaction like crying and totally shocked kind of thing and it happened. He was so grateful he just cried. I was so happy. For family home evening we sat and watched it. It was cool. He also has some negatives that I put on a cd for him for his birthday on Jan 17th and there is alot of those. I can't wait. It's so hard to think of things to give people and when you find the perfect idea and it all goes perfect reaction wise it's amazing.
It sounds like it was a hit! i'm so glad it turned out well. yea!
Post a Comment