MawMaw’s Birthday Book

My grandmothers 70^th birthday is April 15^th, which is also the day that I leave for Kenya.  A few months ago my sister Laura and I started to think about what we could give her as a birthday gift.  I came up with the idea of making a photo book of all the kids, grand kids, and great grand kids so she can have current pictures of all of us in one place.

Thus, the nagging began.  I was in charge of gathering all the pictures from everyone and Laura was in charge of designing the book.  I sent a text and email two months before I needed the pictures in, hoping that someone would send their pictures in early.  No such luck.  After a few month nagging phone calls and texts, I finally sent (when we only had two weeks to get it designed, printed, mailed, and signed) a final text that said “I need the pictures by XXX, if I don’t receive them by XXX we will put a big square that says ‘this child was too busy to send in pictures for your book MawMaw’’  I wasn’t kidding and my family knew it. ;)  You could say that I am very persistent and I get what I want.  

Finally the pictures started rolling in and we could design the book.  We were specific that we wanted current pictures and pictures that we didn’t have to crop random people out of.  We wanted single pictures and family pictures so the book would be special for her.  Laura created each page for each child reflecting their personality.   Notice a flamingo on my page?  Imagine that!

The front cover was a collage of pictures of all of us that we had left over.  Also, there is a big 70 on the front.  Laura found this sweet passage and put it on the front page.

Each child got their own page, along with each grand kid and great grand kid.

The back page was where everyone signed it in gold and silver paint pens.  We had to mail it all over the country New Jersey and Texas to have everyone sign it. 

My Aunt Tracy and her husband Ken had come down from New Jersey for Easter, so all of the kids and grand kids were in town (minus 3 grand kids) so we decided to give her the book then.  We wrapped it all up and presented it to her after lunch by the pool.

We figured she would cry when she opened it, but she didn’t.  Everyone else cried though as she was all “Oh, this is so special”  and “Oh, I just love this” in her super soft voice that means she really did like it. :)

Now we need to come up with something for Paw-Paw’s birthday too!  Any ideas?!