My Family Rocks It

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How outstanding is my family? I've mentioned previously that for 3 years now, we've offered donations in honor of each other with a small gift or two to open on Christmas. It's totally changed our Christmas. This year, in spite of being crazy busy with Pine Tree Designs doing so well, in spite of my nephew Nick being in Iraq, it's been the best, most relaxed, most meaningful, happiest Christmas I've ever had.

From Mom & Dad:

A donation to the Ronald McDonald House, a place near & dear to my heart, where I volunteered for 9 years. This was noted in a computer designed card Mom made.

A framed piece of original paper art that I picked out at one of the craft shows I participated in. I'll post it another time and explain about it.

A handcrafted potholder (purchased at a craft show).

Mom made me a flag to hang on the front of my house. It's something I've always wanted to make myself but just haven't made the time to do it. There is sooo much cool fabric at JoAnn's that I just love - big splashy prints, stuff that looks hand-batiked. I have a limited assortment of purchased flags but I really wanted something colorful and original. So I asked Mom to make me a flag, surprise me with the fabric. It's perfect! I'll take a photo and show you sometime.

From Dad - the promise of 3 crockpot meals over the next 3 months: pork loin with potatoes & carrots; pot roast or ribs with potatoes & carrots and corned beef with cabbage & potatoes. Steve will be out of his mind with joy when he hears this one! And I bet Simon will be stopping by our house on the days he learns one of Grandpa's crockpot meals is available. (If I tell him.)

From Gretchen - a package of handmade paper and envelopes. And a promise of one 5" x 7" photograph per month for the year, taken by her. She started me off with this close-up of cookie making in a clip-frame, so it's just the photo, speaking for itself. It's perfect.

Gretchen gave Mom a Starbucks gift card but it can only be used to buy other people coffee, anonymously preferably. She got the idea from this article in the paper the other day. (You can Google Starbucks pay it forward and get lots of hits - I just picked this one link to give you the idea, in case you didn't know about it.) If Mom feels like she can't pull it off, she can option to give the card to Gretchen who will use it for the same purpose, making sure the recipient knows the coffee is from our mom, or she'll just say, "Your Mother Loves You", which is something our mom says to us all the time. Gretchen wrote this nice note explaining all this, that made a few of us tear up. (Okay, Mom and me. Prompting my nephew Paul to say, "What's with all the water works this year??" More to follow on that tomorrow.)

Gretchen gave Dad a note with a promise of fulfilling this challenge within 1 year and to write about her experience. Gretchen's son, Nick, is in Iraq on his second tour of duty. Since Nick became a Marine, Gretchen finds any opportunity she can, most often in the Atlanta airport where she finds herself often for business, to pay for food or drink, for soldiers passing through. She's perfected the anonymous pay & scram technique. She also talks to them sometimes, making sure they remember to call their mom as soon and often as possible. So this year's challenge is to pay for a sit-down meal for a soldier or two. Sit-down is the key here. They mostly go for fast food and junk food, these men and women serving our country, returning from war. She doesn't know how she's going to do it but I know she will. The opportunity will present itself sometime and because she's looking for it, she'll be ready.

(Speaking of Gretchen's writing, she's promised to write more in her blog this year. Go bookmark it now. You'll laugh, you'll cry. I promise.)

Simon gave me a DVD player for my studio. The best part? It's one he already had and wasn't using so it didn't cost him anything. We'd talked about it a while back, then forgot about it. The other day I was about to buy one at Target for $29 when I remembered his. I suggested he give it to me for Christmas. He felt crummy about it at first but I finally convinced him I really wanted it and it's a great gift.

Simon was even willing to go in on the donation I'm making this Christmas in honor of my family. He's actually getting it, I think.

Gifts don't have to cost money. Gifts come from the heart and I've got rock star gift givers in my family. I love them.

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