wrapping paper tradition

Today I am making gift tags for Christmas.
The bad news is that my vacation time is winding down. The good news is I have gotten a lot of the things I wanted to do done. I am feeling pretty good about the projects I've completed. Making gift tags using the Avery site templates would be a small thing to some people but not to me. To me, it is huge. I feel so scientific!
Before I am done, I plan to make tags for friends and family... for gifts we mail and gifts we deliver ourselves.
Who I will not need to make gift tags for is my children. Nor my husband. Nor the grandbaby. No tags are required for their gifts. They will be able to pick them out pretty much on sight.
That is because I follow my Mother-in-law's lead and select a single print for each member of the family to wrap their gifts in.
She started this with my nephews, her two oldest grandsons, before my husband and I had children. I thought it was a charming tradition then and I think so now.
I loved watching them figure would which paper was theirs and then collect the packages from under the tree into piles all their own. They would arrange them and stack them and shake them.
They would return again and again during the days immediately before we opened gifts on Christmas eve to build small towers with patterned wrapped boxes.
She selected wrap surrounding whatever was going on in the child's life at that particular time. I recall Sesame Street character paper and Disney. Then there were comic book characters and finally sports motifs.
I follow the same plan.
For my oldest daughter, I have used pooh, purple, angels and the nativity. She would recognize anything with those as hers immediately.
For my son,  nutcrackers has been the most often used print ever since he outgrew cartoon characters and super heroes.
The baby daughter's paper usually has involved her activities: dance and tennis and piano and cheerleading. Last Christmas, with her in last year law school, I went with a book print. Other times, her "signature" has carried the day.
For the hub it's been Coca Cola Santas, alligators and pelicans (he's from Louisiana) or bulldogs (the mascot from his high school and college alma maters.)
The grandbaby, there's been kitchens and puppies and Disney princesses. I found a print with crayons for her kindergarten year Christmas last December.
As much fun as it is, and always has been for the kiddos, I admit, it is fun for me to select a new pattern every year. I just hope  my mother-in-law has as much fun when she was following her own tradition.