Birthday Cards

I love birthday cards. I love getting them. I love sending them. I love making them (although once made, I hate sending them away). I love searching for them.

A number of years ago (who's counting...I've had many birthdays, after all), while looking for a birthday card to send my sister I couldn't decide between a funny one or a sentimental one...so I sent her both. That started a new tradition. I now spend the year buying funny birthday cards to send to Wendy, trying not to duplicate the ones she sends to me. It's not unusual for us to receive 7 or 8 birthday cards from one another. Already, two weeks before my birthday, I've already received 5 very funny cards from Wendy, and have a stockpile of cards to start sending her next week (our birthdays are 8 days apart, with mine coming before hers). This giving and receiving of birthday cards is something I look forward to each year.

The whole family seems to enjoy this tradition of ours. The other day when a particularly funny card arrived, Lloyd took it and showed it to our daughters who were upstairs visiting Amy. Yesterday when 7-year old Kenzie brought my mail down, (did I ever mention that Lloyd and I live in Amy's basement suite?) she said "Here's your mail Grammie. Two of them look like they're from Wendy" and she had to watch me open them so she could read them too and laugh about them.

It's a challenge to find cards that Wendy hasn't found. To that end, I avoid Hallmark and Carleton stores, unless absolutely necessary. I've found great cards, different cards, in interesting places...Bubbles Car Wash has racks of unusual cards, as does the truck stop in Vulcan. A couple of stores in the artsy-fartsy university area of Edmonton have an even better selection of non-Hallmark cards. Not that I have anything against Hallmark cards, but everyone has them and I'm looking for the unusual. Indigo and Coles book stores also have a different variety to choose from.

I've had such fun doing this with Wendy that a couple years ago I included my sister in-law, Cath, in my birthday-card-a-rama. She loved it. And this year I 'graduated' my oldest daughter, Jenny, to the multiple card birthday. She got a big kick out of it and called me a couple of times to remark about the cards she was receiving. What the heck! I figured when you turn 37 you're old enough to get funny "ha ha you're old" cards. What else can you do if you can't laugh at the ravages of father time!!! Welcome to the club JLQ. I hope your birthday today is a great one.