Mom's 50th Birthday Present

As some of you may know, my mom turned 50 on December 10th. My sister and I both pretended to have other presents for her, but we had secretly been working on a big present for her for several months. We contacted a bunch of her friends and family that she has known throughout her life and asked them to write a letter to her talking about their favorite memory of her. We called it "50 Years of Memories." A lot of the letters ended up talking about why our mom is special to people, and it was really an amazing experience as her daughters to read them all and put it all together. It turned out really cute, and for those who participated, I wanted to give them an opportunity to see how it turned out.

We put each letter into its own envelope, and using a Cricut machine, wrote the person's name on the envelope. Then we alphabetized the letters and tied them up with a bow and a tag that said "50 years of memories."

Before we gave her the letters, we gave her a wrapped box of tissues and told her we had a different present than what we originally told her. She thought that was pretty funny.

We made her open the box because we knew she would need it, and then we presented her with a second box that had the actual letters inside.

She was really impressed with how many people took time to write a letter for her birthday, and she enjoyed reading all of them. She actually read them all after church yesterday, and I know this because I walked into her room to find her sitting on the bed with tears streaming down her face. She was very grateful and touched by the gift, and she wanted to thank everyone who wrote her a letter.

Becca and I also wanted to thank everyone for participating and helping us out with this project. It was an amazing experience for us to see how many people our mom has influenced, and how much she has touched the lives of others in so many different ways. Thank you for all of your help!!