She's crafty.

I was embellishing on a scrapbook from a group of friends the other day. There were far too few drunken banter photos, so I pulled a bunch out of my archives and added them in. Mostly for my own amusement, but also to give any future viewers a true "picture" of the gang. ;) Suddenly - finally! - I got an inspiration for a Mother's Day gift.

See, I think I started buying Mother's Day gifts when I was about 8 years old, which means that for at least 5 years she got handmade macaroni necklaces or handmade Sunday school Mother's Day cards with glitter that got all into the carpet (but that she probably has saved anyway). And that for the remaining MANY years I've scratched my head every May and tried to come up with something creative. Usually it ended up being flowers or a Paul Simon CD or something else I ran across at the last minute. But this year I decided to make Mom a scrapbook (of sorts) of family photos for Mother's Day. Unemployment has its privileges, after all.

Although I bought the smallest photo album in the world (it only holds 24 photos), it was surprisingly still a struggle to find 24 photos of me and her/the entire fam/me and my bro (which she particularly likes)/her and my bro. (Lesson to all: take more family photos!)

But after some scrounging and a lot more Martha-Stewarting, I'm quite happy with how it turned out and I think she will be too. Here's the cover art:

The album mostly contains photos from the last 6 years of Christmases or other home visits, but there is also one from my high school graduation (over 15 years ago - holy @#$% I'm old!). Truly "past" photos are few and far between but I did manage to accidentally pilfer a few while I was home for Christmas, including this claim to fame and also this one, circa 1982(ish??):


(If memory serves, I think the instructions on this one were: "Look happy and wave hello to Dad, who couldn't make it home from his crazy job on his own birthday, but he still totally appreciates the cake you painstakingly decorated for him." Sorry, Dad. But we enjoyed the cake immensely.)

Happy early Mom's day to all you moms out there. Enjoy your early mom days of macaroni and glitter. It gets much better as the years pass.