This year I wanted to do something special and unexpected for Christmas, luckily I work with some extremely talented people at SPARC.  My co-worker, Matt, started doing some watercolors and I decided that I had to have one.  I asked him about it and he said yes, so then I just had to choose a picture for him to paint.

Most of you know the story behind my obsession of sailboats, but for those who don’t, here goes:  Growing up my family went to Callaway Gardens every  summer for a week.  On Thursdays in day camp, the kids would go on a “bike hike” which I hated, so one year my dad and I decided to do something else and went sailing on a lake instead.  I use the term sailing is used pretty lightly, because if you get me on a real sailboat, I won’t know what to do, but we would take a sunfish sailboat out and spend the afternoon on the water.  Every year I looked forward to Thursday afternoons because it was my time with my dad.  When he passed away in 2004, he wanted his ashes spread at Callaway Gardens on the lake we would sail on and now sailboats are my “thing” that I remember him by.

There’s a picture of my dad on a sailboat at Callaway that our family loves and most of us have it framed somewhere in our houses, so I knew that was the picture I wanted Matt to paint.  I gave him the best version I had and he was good to go.  When Matt started working on the piece, he even sent me the beginnings of it to make sure it was what I was thinking (I told you he was awesome).  He finished the piece and gave it to me with plenty of time to get 3 copies made for Mom, Lauren, and Rollene.  I could barely hold my excitement leading up to Christmas until my family opened their gifts.  Needless to say, they all loved it and there were some tears — Best Christmas present ever.

If you’re interested in checking out more of Matt’s work or getting one of your own, click here.