Birthday wishes from afar

Sometimes living 1500 miles away from family is a little tough, like on Birthdays. The kids are a bit young to realize how hard it is on our hearts to not be around our family. Most of the time they miss their cousins and grandparents but I don't think they truly realize how hard it is on the birthdays of our loved ones, and how both James and I wish that we could be there to share in the moments.

It is one of the hardest parts of living in Colorado. Family. We miss our family a lot, and although we have built a life here in Colorado, it truly is never complete without family.

This year, I had an idea to send a special birthday wish to James's dad. Today is his birthday and well, I knew he would be at work today... I asked a special friend that works in his office to help with a birthday surprise.

ScanNCut Birthday Letters

One thing that I loved about ScanNCut is the ease of use and that my kids could use it. I know it seems like an expensive item to let kids use, but with supervision I have enjoyed allowing my kids explore their creative sides and being able to create art along side with them.

Because of ScanNCut's built in 300 DPI Scanner and ease of use, this birthday project was super easy and took just a few minutes for the kids to create.

To Begin I had the kids each write a little note from the heart.

Next, they loaded their messages onto the low tack mat and into the machine.

 Hit Scan.

 Scan to USB.

 And Start.

 And that's it...

ScanNCut saved the images as JPG's to my USB. I then used the computer to crop them down and sent them to my friend at my father in laws office to print and leave on his desk through out the day...

The kids and their creations :)

 And of course this lead to a mini photo shoot.... Here you will see the kids posing "normal"

 And here, well posing like models...

 And here... like gorillas...

 And here... like our daughter is their boss...

It only took a few minutes to create this fun birthday wish. I love having these moments with the kids and pray that it stays with their hearts as their grow up and have their own families.

Of course.. we can't have a birthday post without wishing a BIG HICKS BIRTHDAY to the big guy himself...

Happy Birthday Jay! Thank you for being an amazing father and grandfather to our family... You are a wonderful example to us all. We are so very blessed and fortunate to have you in our lives. We love you and hope that you have a wonderful day!

So although we are far away, I am grateful for technology, our fun little family and sneaky friends who are always up for the challenge to help (Thanks Lisa!).

I hope this inspires you to give a little shout out to your loved ones today, and maybe use ScanNCut too!

~Liz ♥