Samuel’s grandparents are all 50+ now, with Nana’s birthday on the 28th of December. We squeezed in two days of birthday events in between the Point Wells Christmas and the Whangarei one, which made everything that much tighter, but these events don’t come often!

We bought her a digital photo frame (which we also did for Poppa, and had previously for Grandma) – the difference in quality between the frames each year is quite dramatic. The one we bought her is one I would almost use myself. (I really feel that the frame needs to auto-pull photos, and needs to be able to change photo slowly (once an hour, once a day, once a week) rather than quickly – if I want a slideshow, I’ll use the TV or a computer). They still seem a bit chunky, though, considering the size of other devices (e.g. an iPod Touch), and include pointless features (e.g. displaying video and playing music).

The other gift didn’t quite get organised quickly enough to arrive in time to get to her on her birthday (and in fact has still yet to arrive, probably held up by the holiday no-mail days). As an alternative, we made a DVD including an Animoto video of some ‘this is your life’ photos (download/view the higher quality (35 MB) version), as well as a collection of the Samuel photos & video we’ve made so far.