birthdays, birthdays everywhere!

Today is my charismatic, Southern-talking, curly-haired brother-in-law's birthday. He lives far away in Georgia with my sister and their 5 kids. We miss them terribly! Lucky for us, we get to see them all in a few weeks!

For Randy's birthday, our family answered a few questions about him. The traditional birthday questionnaire has been quite a hit... in fact, it's gotten a little carried away. Instead of emailing out the questions and compiling them myself, I decided to whip up a Birthday Questionnaire Blog. It's been easy for others to access and so much less work for me to organize. I post the questions on the blog and let others answer in the comment box. On the actual birthday, we give the web address to the birthday girl/boy and they get to read all the answers. How simple is that? I am keeping them on the same blog so that at the end of the year, we can compile everyone's answers in a book. The only trick (when you have as many family members as I do and some people know their birthday questions are coming up) is to make sure you CHANGE the web address so the birthday person doesn't cheat and read all the questions before their big day. This is simple to do under settings/publishing. Once a birthday has passed, you can type up questions for the next birthday and let everything think on them for a while. I have LOVED being in charge of something like this. It makes me feel more connected to my family who lives so far away. For those of you who know and love my mom, she celebrated her birthday in June. You may want to read HER birthday tribute HERE.

This has been so much fun for our family and it really doesn't take THAT much effort. This past month, my sweet Grandma June had a birthday and I decided to do questions for her and invite the extended family to answer. So, I started her own blog and sent out the link. The response was overwhelming. Not only did all of her children answer the questions, but EVERY.SINGLE.ONE. of her grandchildren answered before her birthday. It was such an outpouring of love and I felt so emotional reading over her birthday tribute. (I cried like a baby!) I decided to take everyone's answers and compile them into a book at Kinko's. And even though my Grandma was able to read everyone's comments via the computer, I thought it would be special to have a hard copy to read any time she wants. The book was over 45 pages long and it was only about $12 to print. How's that for a meaningful, inexpensive gift?

A few days ago, my wonderful, sweet, spunky Aunt Karen had a birthday and we threw together a blog for her-- totally last minute. The day before her birthday, I sent out the link to her loving family. It was so simple and so easy, and the end result is really powerful. It's truly amazing how easily you can unite family members (who live thousands of miles away from each other) with just a few simple questions. These past few weeks, I have been reminded what an amazing family I have. I feel so lucky to belong to such a group of people.

Spread the love and start your own family birthday blog! I dare you!