"The Dreamstepper"

I have a ridiculously creative sister in law. Her creativity knows no bounds and always seems to leave me shaking my head in wonder! She is amazing!

So, my Mom, as I have mentioned before is a book lover. L.O.V.E.R. She also happens to have a birthday, as most do. Hers was January 29th. A few weeks before her B-day my sister in law sent out an email to everyone requesting a picture from each of our kids to add to a book she was making to my Mom. The idea behind this......

Grandma (my Mom) falls into a deep sleep after a long and exhausting day of librarian work. She then starts into a very peculiar dream. She is climbing a huge pile of books. With each step she steps into the plot of the book she steps on. Each step or plot idea is represented by each grandchild and a picture they drew showing Grandma involved in the story.

We all sent in our pictures. The kids were really excited about the task. They got pretty creative. There were pictures of Grandma painting a self portrait, Grandma shooting the winning goal at a REAL Soccer game, Grandma swishing her hips down an Italian fashion show runway and more. My sister in law used Snapfish to have the pictures printed into a hard cover book.

Oh I wish you could have seen my Mom's reaction! Page by page her smile and excitement grew. The older kids included their own narration. This is my Jake's, for example. He couldn't narrow it down between Backyardigans and Light Saber Duels, so why not both?!

For the little kids, Abby provided some fun narration to tie the story together. This was my Mallory's. Abby's text was: (from the previous page) "she took another step and...." (Mally's Page) "Was eating scrumptious pink cupcakes. But a crazy side effect was that Mallory and Grandma turned a beautiful rosey color. Grandma hesitantly took a stepped on the next book and was instantly....." and she is whisked off into the next book! How fun is that?! This is Mallory's picture (first people she has ever drawn, by the way).

The book ended with Grandma enjoying the experience of being a "Dreamstepper" but saying that she would much rather enjoy hiking through her wonderful life with the people she loved. The last 2 pages were a spread of pictures of each of the kids, the illustrators and co-authors of the book. Priceless!

I wanted to share this with you because I thought it was such a fabulous gift idea! Honestly, I would say that it is one of, if not her absolute favorite gift ever!

I do LOVE a good heartfelt gift!