If you're having trouble trying to come up with the perfect gift for your children this year, I have an idea. Write or record an Ethical Will. What's that? A letter (written or spoken) to your loved one ... telling him or her all the things you would say if you knew this were your last chance. Because it is. That's the point. You're saying it now, before it's too late, and so that when the time comes, your child will have something tangible from you to take comfort in.

A woman I've known for several years told me the other day that she has written several letters to each of her daughters (ages 8 and 10). Why? Because she'll never forget the day she came home after her mother passed away suddenly ... and she spent hours ransacking the house looking for something her mother left for her. A letter? A note? 

"She must have left me something," she thought. Even now, almost 20 years later, she throws her hands into the air as she says, "There was nothing. I had nothing."

So every couple of years, she writes her daughters a letter. "I tell them all the things I want them to know about how they've impacted my life, how much I love them, and what I want them to carry with them as they walk through each stage of their life," she said.

And these letters don't just sit in a drawer, they are part of their everyday lives. Bringing them closer ... in the moment. "The girls are always asking me to read them aloud," she laughed. "Even at the dinner table." 

We all have grandiose ideas of placing handmade gifts under the tree that would make Martha Stewart proud. But instead of knitting a scarf or feeling guilty because you didn't, why not give your son or daughter something heart-made, instead? Take an hour to sit down with a pen and paper and create something that will be treasured today and for years to come. 

Yes, it's true. We're a "disposable society."  But we regularly dispose of more than blenders, jeans, and laptops.  

We clean out our "Sent" email files and neglect to print out our digital photos. Most of our personal information sits on our hard drives or on servers of password-protected internet companies, says Professor John Naughton in a recent article.

What we know about our great-grandparents and their parents is primarily gathered through old letters, photos, and diaries. But those tangible written communications from the past to the future have been replaced by the less-tangible — emails, Facebook posts, and blog entries. 

What are we doing to ensure that our family's digital library is protected … when the computer crashes or we're no longer around to keep up our Facebook page. 

Naughton writes about the importance of keeping a printed record of our online communications — or using a service like Entrustet to do the digital archiving for you. He says that we may be "carelessly or unwittingly — consigning the records of our lives to the digital shredder."  

Whether or not you'll be gathering around the Thanksgiving dinner table with your extended family this year, you can honor and celebrate your family history and heritage by including some old family recipes in your holiday meal plan.

Grandma's special stuffing. Aunt Mary's squash casserole. Uncle Fred's gravy.

What comes to mind when you remember Thanksgiving dinners from your childhood? A particular dessert? A yummy appetizer?

My grandmother always made the softest, flakiest homemade rolls; we would eat them by the handful. My mouth waters just thinking about them. 

A few years ago, I hunted down the recipe and made them for Thanksgiving dinner. They weren't quite as good as hers. I probably didn't use enough butter. But nevertheless, my grandmother would have been delighted to know that I cared enough to try and recreate her Thanksgiving masterpiece. 

Those rolls will continue to be a holiday tradition in our home — and maybe one-day in our children's homes.

Once you've identified the favorite family dishes that you'd like to revive, you may need to dig around a bit to find the recipes. In fact, some of them may have never been written down to begin with.

So many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers carried around entire recipe books in their heads, having learned each dish from grandmothers of their own. But I bet that if you call around to enough aunts, sisters, and cousins — you'll be able to pull together most of the ingredients. (And fill in the blanks through an online search.)

But preserving and passing on this core part of your family history will be well worth the time and effort it might take. Future generations of your family will thank you.