60!

On March 22nd my dady turned 60!  A few months before I had seen this fun idea on Pinterest to get 60 cards together for a gift.  I thought that would be a super fun gift, especially because he did not want a party. So after some debating we got to work on it.  It was fun to think of all the people through the years who would want to be involved.  We kept trying to keep it a secret but my dad kept coming in at the most inopportune moments, and so he knew something was coming.  But it was still a fun thing to do, and made it far more exciting to go get the mail and see who had responded by sending a card.

3.17.2012

On St. Patrick's Day Hallie and I finally sat down to do our cards.  Hallie drew a picture, and wrote a note to Grandpa (her first ever, to anyone!), and put stickers on it.  Then I asked her what she loved about Grandpa, and wrote those down and glued them to the back of her card.  She came up with some fun, and some really sweet things.







 If you zoom in you can read what she said.  I think my favorite is, "I love to give Granpa loves.  Grandma and Grandpa REALLY love me."  She was just so cute about it, and it is oh so true!

 The inside that she wrote all by herself!

Also, just a funny story.  One of my parent's neighbors dropped by a card and a frame for my dad at our house, which is great, some other people did the same.  But not at 7 am!  We are not an early morning family, so when we heard someone knocking on the door at that time we ignored it.  But then the door bell rang, and we ignored it.  Then they knocked again harder, then rang the door bell, and knocked, and rang, etc until we finally decided we better get up and see what was going on.  Thinking it was something major going on, (fire, police, a neighbor with a major problem, etc.) I opened the door, barely awake, to find Sister Orton with a smile on her face, and she said "Hi, we just wanted to drop this off for you dad," then she turned around and went down the stairs. Not an ideal way to start the morning, but it made us laugh at least. 

3.24.2012

The original plan was to wait until the whole family was together to give them to him, but since he already knew, and some people had asked him about it or called or visited on his birthday, we gave up on it being a surprise.  Oh well.

So I got the ones I had all stacked and tied together and ready to go.

 And the little girls gave them to him on the Saturday after his birthday while they were there to play.

 I think at this point there were 64 cards, letters and emails...and I'd say around 10 more came after that. 

 Then after that the girls played in the sand, while we all sat at the fire ring and talked.

 Looking at who all had sent cards.