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Christmas gifts excite and terrify me. I always get stressed out over finding the perfect gift for my in-laws, and with a husband who has a tendency to wait until Christmas Eve to buy presents, my stress only multiplies later in the season. This Christmas, I knew that I wanted our gifts to be heartfelt and few, since we couldn’t shower everyone with oodles of trinkets and boxes. For my mother-in-law, especially, I wanted to give her something that would really mean something to her. A memory of days gone by. Basically, my goal was to make her shed some tears.
The funny thing about memories is that you tend to forget about them until one small thing triggers your brain into remembering what happened in the past. As a , we were encouraged to send in old VHS and 8mm tapes to be transferred before the holidays. I did what I was told, trying to find every tape in the house. I didn’t think about what was on them, or how uploading these onto actual DVDs and into a cloud would bring such joy for us in the coming weeks. It turned out that this little action ended up providing one of the best moments of our family’s Christmas celebrations.
On Christmas day, we exchanged our gifts. My husband kept insisting that we give his mother her gift, not remembering out plan. I’d downloaded the free YesVideo app onto my iPad, and as she opened her gift, I would be next to her and show the video. You may be asking what the video displayed. It was the very first time she held my first born. Her first grandchild. It was only 8 years ago, but it seems like an eternity. Once I saw what the video was, I knew that I had to pass this DVD onto her. Another awesome part is that I was able to email her the video so she’ll be able to watch it on her own iPad or computer, and share it with her friends on Facebook. Memories are meant to be shared.
This one little gift helped us all remember when; those times when my little boy was just that, and when our family was so young. The best gift is a memory because it never leaves you, and shows up right when you need it, like a quiet moment on Christmas day.
