I mentioned we had some news that we shared with our friends in our new years card (and a special thank you to our patient friends and family who actually sat down and de-coded the card!). We wanted to share our big news with my parents and our children Bee and C on Christmas morning, so we decided to tell everyone all at once.
I offered to help my parents with their Christmas card this year and decided to do a Family Tree showing how our family is growing (there were 3 new babies in 2009). My parents have six children (I'm the fourth) and between my siblings and I there are 14 grandchildren. While I had everyone together this summer for our annual family reunion, I asked each person to stand against a wall so I could take their photo (mug shot style, with a sideways profile..). Later I traced the photos in Illustrator to make silhouettes of each person in our family. The result was a family tree chart that we printed on 10x14 sheets of paper and folded in fours and mailed out as Christmas cards.
For a gift to my parents I printed a large poster size version, framed it in a simple black frame, and wrapped it up for them to open Christmas morning. My mom unwrapped the gift with Bee and C sitting next to her. Immediately Bee and C wanted to know where they were in the chart, so my mom pointed to their silhouettes. And that's when she realized that this chart had a new addition (fourth row).
A new little baby for our family. It was perfect. My mom screamed, and the children literally jumped for joy (they've been asking for a baby for over a year now). It might be the happiest Christmas morning ever.