Mother's Day Gift Ideas for a Mom Serving in the Military

As Mother's Day approaches, we are considering ways to celebrate Mother's Day and show your mom or wife that you love her. But what do you do if mom is serving in the Military and you cannot be with her? Moms who are serving their country in the armed forces especially, need to be remembered on Mother's Day. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to be separated from my children for so long and be so far away. I think that for our military moms Mother's Day must be very difficult. So we need to do all we can to show them that they are loved and appreciated. Here is a really neat inexpenisve gift to make to send your love to your enlisted wife or mom.

Make a video for Mom on Windows Movie Maker: Windows Movie Maker is automatically installed on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. If you do not have a computer, your local library has computers that you can freely use. The file you create is called a .wmv file and can be sent to Mom in several ways.

Send your video to your email and send it.
Burned your video to a CD and opened on most any computer.
Send it on a small USB removable device (called a thumb drive).
You can also burn it to a DVD if you have the right software and opened on a DVD player.
You may be able to upload the movie to the Internet and then download to your cell phone and send the file if the phone has Internet capabilities.
Lastly, you can post the video to a profile site like Myspace or YouTube (you will need to create a User ID for these sites, but you can set your profile to private.)

Gather Material for Your Video:

To make the video or .wmv file, take candid pictures of the family with your digital camera or camera phone. Upload them onto your computer with the USB cable on your camera.

Record messages as .mpeg files and store them in 'My Music' on Windows Media Player. You will need a microphone, available from Target, Walmart or any discount store for around $10. Add them to the video as you would music (described below).

Download any music that you want to use in the video. You can copy music from a CD to My Music from your D: Drive.

Layout of Windows Movie Maker Utility: