Family Matters
SunAndRain
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What is the best Mother's Day gift you ever gave/received?
I have given the standard bouquet of flowers for the last 15...no make that 20...years. Wondering if there might be a better idea out there. I can't do anything in-person because we're on two different continents.
What is the best Mother's Day gift you ever gave/received?
Re: What is the best Mother's Day gift you ever gave/received?
I painted my mom a self portrait which she absolutely loved for Mother's Day last year.
But I have been thinking of doing this:
custom made stamps of a person's face
Or you could do something towards her interests. My grandparents take a train down the coast every Christmas so last Christmas all of their kids paid for their trip for them. My Grandma likes gardening so we send her seeds every mother's day, which she loves to watch grow and update us on their progress. My mom is a kid at heart and we usually get her something fun that makes her feel like a kid again like her decade candy baskets, cd's from her teens, like the monkeys, we even got her a hula hoop one year because she complained about how her mom would never let her have one.
What interests her the most?
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I give my mother and MIL gift baskets of wine and munchies. They both love wine and yummy munchies and I can order them from Germany.
I usually use Wine Country http://www.winecountrygiftbaskets.com/, but there are some others out there.
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My mother is a chonic complainer. No matter what I gave her, she always found fault with it. She also hated gift cards ("too impersonal").
One year, I got fed up with her complaining ("oh, you know the plant you got me? It died...."). I decided the H*** with it and purchased a gift card for a local nursery. I vowed to give her that every year - even if she complained about it being impersonal, at least it was easy for me, and she would complain anyway.
Wouldn't you know, she loved it? Now I give one to her every year.
One year, my sis and I made a short video clip of ourselves listing reasons that we loved our mom. Some were silly and some were serious, but she still takes out that video when she's having a bad day or missing us now that we live farther away.
I think a heartfelt letter, as suggested above, is another really fantastic gift. If she likes photos, you could do a mini scrapbook of pictures of you, your mom, and even your LO(s) if relevant, and do something fun like 'top ten things you taught me.'
This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but one year my sister and I took my mom to a casino for the day. We've both been to Vegas several times, but our mom has never been to a casino before. My sister made the arrangements, I drove, and we both chipped in some cash for mom to feed the slots and video poker games. It was a really fun day!
I've also made my mom different types of bread or bagels (I love baking!)
This year I'm getting my mom a Nintendo DS. She really likes video games, and she's undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She has to spend every other Friday getting chemo, plus a ton of time waiting in doctor's waiting rooms, and it's really boring, but she doesn't want to lug her laptop. She already has a kindle, but she doesn't want to read for 5 or 6 hours. I thought a DS would be a fun way for her to spend time. I want to get her something fun and funny, not something that says "gee, mom, you sure have cancer!!"
Can't say I ever gave a stellar Mother's Day gift because I didn't have the closest relationship with my mother. If things were uber tight, I would walk over with flowers - other than that, I would try to think of things which my mother was interested in or needed (in a non-utilitarian way...for example, my father had a loooong spell of depression and late nights working...they needed alone time, so I purchased a very very expensive night out for them which included a hoity-toity restaurant they otherwise wouldn't have treated themselves to).
The *best* MD present I received was an entire day out with the kids and they all wrote personal notes - not letter length, but much more personal than a card with "love, Kid" written inside. As a mother, I will tell you that I often carried hurt with me that I wasn't measuring up to what I had hoped I would be - having those letters which weren't over the top exaggerations, but appreciations and shared memories that teens and adult-kids don't often think of their parent's as needing...it was and remains my most precious gift received.