A Gift From Us To You...& From You To Us

Lynette, you will totally understand my excitement about this post.

Yesterday, I went to the mailbox to collect my weeks worth of mail only to find a package addressed to me from my grandmother. I love packages. Any kind of mail for that matter. So as soon as I got home I opened it. I had no idea what she might be sending me. I ripped open the large envelope and pulled out this.

What is 'this' you ask? Well let me tell you a little story.

Christmas 2006, I was struggling what to get family. Lynette had a wonderful idea! History journals with questions in a jar. She showed me her crafty way of making it look cute....and I can't resist crafty cute ideas...so I asked her to help me. We decorated simple notebooks with scrapbook paper, love scrapbook paper, and ribbon. I added black and white wallet size photos of my family in 2006 to the divider pages and fun vintage clip art as well for a custom look and feel. Then we downloaded geneaology questions from sited online and cut them into strips, put them in a jar, made a special label for the jar, and decorated the top. For Christmas, each on of the grandparents & great grandparents received a notebook and jar. I was so excited for them. Some of them weren't excited about the challenge I gave but none the less...I want my children to know about their grandparents.

365 questions later...my grandmother is the first to complete this book. I cried when I saw what it was and flipped through the pages to find her handwriting, photos, and drawings.

This is such a wonderful priceless gift that I can share with my kids. K was flipping through it and found a song that my grandparents wrote and composed together and I sat down at the piano and plunked it out. Every few minutes K would come in my bathroom where I was getting ready for the day and say, 'Mom, look at this.' 'Mom, did you know Great Grandma Gore was in the military?' 'Mom, look it's Great Grandma's wedding picture.' and 'Mom, Great Grandma looks like Aunt Abby in this picture' (I didn't have the heart to tell her that Great Grandma Gore is Grandma Sanchez' adopted Mom, because I thought it was so cute how she made a physical comparison between family members).

Thank you so much, Grandma for taking this challenge and completing this book for us. And for those Grandparents that are still working on this...keep going. I don't care how long it takes you to finish...just finish. Your grandkids will love you all the more for it. They will have pieces of you for generations to come. This is certainly a family treasure.