Sentimental Gifts

Christmas will be here before we know it and I am up late, again, trying to put together some sentimental gifts. We already purchased my parents a new dishwasher and had it installed before Thanksgiving. I usually make some sort of food gift for my siblings & their families. Last year it was Instant Tortilla Soup in a Mug (the little kids each got a tin of puppy chow). The Year before, beer bread. Previous year: Chai Tea. This year, I have eight Friendship bread starters "working" in the kitchen; they will multiply to 32 tomorrow!

I still always try to give something sentimental to my mom. One year I wrote my parents a book about their grandchildren. It has been a favorite & I had to rebind it this year. For her 75th birthday I wrote a poem that I framed. I would still like to turn that one into a book--maybe for her 77th? On her 70th, we made a book full of thank-you's (70 of them), each on 4x6 card stock & illustrated by my very artistic sister. This year, I got an idea when I was visiting my mom last Wednesday and saw her 50th Anniversary Photo Album was busting at the seams from all the handling. My very artistic sister scrapbooked two pages for each of their children as a gift for their anniversary. I decided to take it Wednesday...though my mom didn't want to part with it...to get the pages scanned to a DVD. I wanted to print out & laminate a kid friendly copy for the grandchildren to peruse, which should ease on the wear & tear. I also planned to copy DVDs for all my siblings. This way, we all have a copy, since many of us gave up our few one-of-a-kind photos for the project (not too many kid pictures are taken after the first couple kids, as those of you from large families may know).

The project is almost done, but not without a bunch of snags. I took the book to Kinkos, but their scanners weren't big enough for 12x12 pages. I then went to Office Max. Yes, they could do it. $7.99 for the first page, 1.99 for additional, and a fee to put it on DVD. The gentleman said, come back in a couple hours. It was Friday night...right before the storm. When we returned, they had some troubles. The files were too big & he couldn't do with them what he planned, but they were all scanned. They were taking too long to download. Could I maybe stop back tomorrow? Probably not in a blizzard...so, he was going to email them. That didn't work. The files were too big. Their computer has now crashed several times. Now it is late Saturday evening and he is trying to figure out how to shrink them. Sunday, I hear nothing. I call Monday, and the gal says the guy working on them will be in tomorrow and she knows of nothing she was supposed to finish. Right after supper, I get a call saying they had burned them to a DVD. I send my husband on the 2 1/2 hour round trip. He gets the DVD home. I pop it in my computer and immediately notice there were only 29 scans, not 30. I check my sales slip from Friday, and sure enough, there were only 29 scans done. Dang! Why I didn't I notice that Friday night? So, I open up each page to figure out who is missing. My youngest sister is missing one of her pages. I'll have to call in the morning to see if they can do the page, though it will be snowing, & not sure hubby would want to run back to St. Cloud, plus to my mother's to retrieve the album, which I had promptly returned to her Friday night. Plus, if they charge it as a new project, I'd have to pay $7.99 for the scan plus another DVD burned ($9.99 or something like that.) Poor guy working on this will probably run next time he sees someone walk in with such a project. I'm thinking about recording what I have to a re-recordable DVD, then having the other page done later. What would you do (besides come up with the idea a little earlier)?

Here are a couple of the pages...my Mom & Dad's Wedding Photo & part of one of my pages...

The shot below was shrunk & cropped, so it is a bit warped...not unlike myself! ;-)

Pictures, clockwise from bottom left: My brother (5-1/2) and me(4) holding up a fish almost as big as us. My 4th grade picture (almost 10). Here I am at 11 months (I still have that dress). My husband, the kids, and I in the Beatles booth at Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando --1997. The kids were 13, 10, & 7 at the time.

(Originally published @ Area Voices)