Sea Glass & Gifts
M really loves collecting sea glass. I first became aware of this love when we visited a beach famous for sea glass on our trip to PEI. When her mother visits, they often go down to two beaches on Lake Erie that occasionally have sea glass, (technically beach glass, since it's a lake) and she has several small plastic bags filled with her findings. M often jokingly refers to this as "sea trash."
As such, one of her Mother's Day gifts this year was a pair of waterproof boots appropriate for wading in the shallow parts of the lake. I'd put this gift idea on the list after she predictably came home from one sea glass outing with soaked shoes.
And yes, I do have a list of gift ideas for every member of my immediate family. It makes gift-giving a lot easier. Sometimes the items on the list are items explicitly requested, and other times they are things that I think between gift giving occasions. Since M has (at a minimum) Mother's Day, our anniversary, her birthday and Hanukkah as gift opportunities, her list turns over the most quickly, but fortunately one of the benefits of living with her is that I have a lot more observational data about what she might like as a gift, so it balances out. I try very hard to follow the stance of "a good gift is one that the person will love but would never buy for themselves."
Mother's Day will probably be more fun once Birdie is old enough to pick out gifts herself, but until then I'll cover for her. This year for Mother's Day, M received:
- the aforementioned boots.
- a giant bag of Atomic Fireballs, which are her favorite candy.
- a homemade cheesecake. This was the second Mother's Day in a row where she got a cheesecake (specifically the Moosewood Favorites Vanilla Cheesecake), and I hope to make it an ongoing tradition. Her first slice this year was garnished with an Atomic Fireball.
- a fancy card with pop up paper flowers. Cards like these have popped up (if you'll excuse the pun) a lot over the last few years, and M loves them. Most of the cards she receives from me are pop ups. My go to brand for these is LovePop. This year she got a water lily / dragonfly combo.
Speaking of Birdie, she gets virtually no processed sugar, so the tiny forkfuls of Mother's Day cheesecake she had blew her tiny mind. She audibly said "mmmm!" after all three forkfuls. Actually, "forkful" is overstating it. It's more like we traced the fork through a piece of cheesecake and gave whatever bits of cheesecake stuck to Birdie, but that was enough to elicit an "mmmm!"
Somehow, after all these years M didn't have her own tag in this journal, but she does now!. I've already retrofitted it to an older post.
As such, one of her Mother's Day gifts this year was a pair of waterproof boots appropriate for wading in the shallow parts of the lake. I'd put this gift idea on the list after she predictably came home from one sea glass outing with soaked shoes.
And yes, I do have a list of gift ideas for every member of my immediate family. It makes gift-giving a lot easier. Sometimes the items on the list are items explicitly requested, and other times they are things that I think between gift giving occasions. Since M has (at a minimum) Mother's Day, our anniversary, her birthday and Hanukkah as gift opportunities, her list turns over the most quickly, but fortunately one of the benefits of living with her is that I have a lot more observational data about what she might like as a gift, so it balances out. I try very hard to follow the stance of "a good gift is one that the person will love but would never buy for themselves."
Mother's Day will probably be more fun once Birdie is old enough to pick out gifts herself, but until then I'll cover for her. This year for Mother's Day, M received:
- the aforementioned boots.
- a giant bag of Atomic Fireballs, which are her favorite candy.
- a homemade cheesecake. This was the second Mother's Day in a row where she got a cheesecake (specifically the Moosewood Favorites Vanilla Cheesecake), and I hope to make it an ongoing tradition. Her first slice this year was garnished with an Atomic Fireball.
- a fancy card with pop up paper flowers. Cards like these have popped up (if you'll excuse the pun) a lot over the last few years, and M loves them. Most of the cards she receives from me are pop ups. My go to brand for these is LovePop. This year she got a water lily / dragonfly combo.
Speaking of Birdie, she gets virtually no processed sugar, so the tiny forkfuls of Mother's Day cheesecake she had blew her tiny mind. She audibly said "mmmm!" after all three forkfuls. Actually, "forkful" is overstating it. It's more like we traced the fork through a piece of cheesecake and gave whatever bits of cheesecake stuck to Birdie, but that was enough to elicit an "mmmm!"
Somehow, after all these years M didn't have her own tag in this journal, but she does now!. I've already retrofitted it to an older post.