2009 was a great year for my younger son's high school golf team, including a 6th place finish in the State Tournament. And of course, all season long I had been collecting newspaper articles, scores and photos. So when the season was over it was a simple matter to scan the articles, scorecards and a few pages from the State Tournament program, add the photos from tournament weekend and put together a book highlighting his last high school golf season. A quick email to the coach produced season statistics and individual scores and it was done! Even though I do these books for a living, his response to the book on Christmas morning was a very rewarding "Wow, I didn't expect THIS!"

For my college son I took the broader retrospective approach, and created a memory poster reviewing his career in sports from the first time he picked up a ball and bat, through the end of his high school soccer career in 2006. While the piece is dominated by his favorite sport, soccer, it was fun to see glimpses of his early years in baseball, swimming and basketball, and to include his other athletic endeavors such as tubing, skiing and roller-blading, and the team pictures gave us many happy hours of "remember him?". As the centerpiece I chose his "get-to-know-me" poem all ninth graders at our school write the first week of high school, because it spoke perfectly to how he saw himself as an athlete. The result, if I do say so myself, is college-wall worthy and best of all, if it gets torn up, misplaced or damaged in any way, it is replaceable at a minimum printing cost.

There are years when I have really struggled with what to give these two boys that won't be cast aside or broken before Spring Break. This year I felt really great about giving a gift with lasting value and meaning!

~ Kristi