The Mother of all Mother's Day Gifts

Mother's Day was awesome. My hubby gave me the best gift he has ever given me for Mother's Day in our 19 years of marriage. He could not wait 'til Mother's Day, though. So I got it a few days earlier, and I love it!

It's a digital picture display frame that also plays music. As cool as that is, that was not the real gift. 

On Thursday evening prior to Mother's Day, my husband took me to our room, where the lights were turned off, and led me to stand at the foot of the bed, facing our captain's bed headboard, which is almost a bookcase with a lighted mirror above a shelf, and cubbies.

I heard music (that's OUR song!) and saw pictures of our family appearing on what I thought was my husband's work computer. First there was my baby picture, then my husband's baby picture, then one of us on our wedding day, one of me on the day after our wedding (which hubby says is his favorite picture ever), and then there came a baby picture of each one of our children as babies, followed by a current picture of them . . . so the oldest is shown first as a chubby 2-month-old, and immediately after as a nearly-18-year-old in his tuxedo with his prom date! Talk about a tear-jerker . . . 

Our song is Forever Young by Alphaville, and it's playing repeatedly while I watch pictures of my babies growing up . . . mixing the exciting memory of our first slow dance together nearly 20 years ago with the sweet memories of meeting our newborns at each of their births. I'm crying and loving it. Near the end, there's a portrait of a younger me holding my infant daughter who is now a preteen blue-eyed bombshell, and finally a picture of the Houston Texas temple with an image of an oak tree superimposed on the background . . .  the tree part is just an image of transparent light, and of course it's symbolic of our family tree. 

My oldest daughter turned on the light, and I saw that the pictures were not in fact being shown on my hubby's computer, but on my very own musical digital picture player (reminds me of Picture Picture on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood)!

Now I just have to figure out how to upload the whole video on to this blog, or convince hubby to do that for me ;)

Oh, and how do I follow this example of thoughtful gift-giving for Father's Day???