Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Perfect Gift.

When I was in elementary school, every girl had their eye on the same toy for Christmas. It was a package of tiny plastic horses, as in, Polly Pocket small, and despite my extensive googling, I cannot, for the life of me, find them anymore. Anyway.

Small plastic horses.

Their feet were molded together to create some sort of lock that could turn on the lights and play music in their huge fantasy castle. All kinds of cool, right? So, those little ponies were what I really wanted for Christmas. I'm not sure why I wanted them so badly, but I did. On Christmas morning, I remember opening a couple gifts before tearing open the package that beheld four of those tiny hard pink plastic horses with their "real" pink flowing manes and tails. My eyes watered, I was so excited. I couldn't believe it.

And then my Dad reached behind the tree and pushed out another gift. A big one.

It was the fantasy castle.

I almost died.

My parents were by no means stingy with Christmas, but they weren't excessive, either. So getting the horses I wanted AND the castle was like having someone offer you a second helping of delicious Go Diva cheesecake. You don't refuse it, but shoot, you were perfectly fine without it, too! I've received some wonderfully thoughtful Christmas presents, but for some reason I've never forgotten how I felt on that day when I first saw the horses and then the castle. It just blew me away.

So! Here is my question to you: What is the BEST Christmas present you remember receiving? Now, I'm going to be kind of a pain and put a limit on this. I want to know what your favorite present was as a kid. Not that adult presents aren't fun, too, but I really don't want this to become some sort of collecting grounds for those potentially braggadocious comments filled with new expensive cars or jewelry or $50,000 savings bonds or whatever. I am not impressed in the least by these.

What I AM impressed with is creative (or very savvy) parents or friends or grandparents who managed to pick out that PERFECT gift when you were a youngster. It's the Christmases as kids that filled us with the most joy, and I want to know what yours was!

Okay ... go!

7 comments:

  1. hahaha, i love the word braggadocious!

    sadly i don't have any good memories of special presents! i've been sitting here for 2 minutes thinking of what i can share and am blanking. my girlfriends and i used to make presents for each other. ohh i got one! my best friend, heather, made me a mousepad 12 years ago with our picture on it and i still have it! ha.

    although i might trade it for a $50,000 savings bond ;)

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  2. Oh my, hands down the standing chalkboard with a message written in chalk from Santa. I wanted a chalkboard SO BAD that year, (I loved playing teacher) and when I woke up Christmas morning and had that beloved chalkboard with a hand written note from Santa, I never wanted to erase it!!! The reverse side of the chalk board was an art easel, where I could hang paper and paint or draw. Oh how I loved that thing.

    I also adored my Easy Bake Oven. But the chalkboard takes the cake. Or I guess you could say, it takes the Go Diva Cheesecake.

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  3. I am so pregnant - can you believe I cried reading that post?!

    Well, I was probably 9 or 10 and my dad had made us a pair of stilts and painted them blue. I don't know why we were so fascinated with stilts or wanted a pair so bad, but I remember bundling up that morning and going out on our huge back porch (dad does concrete foundations so we had a lot of concrete at our house!) and taking turns on our blue stilts! We got really good too!

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  4. I don't remember the exact year, but I was really into Lite-Brite. My parents got me one for Christmas, and then for my birthday 4 days later) they gave me a wooden box that my dad had made to hold it. It's hard to explain, but Dad had cut out handles in the box, which made it easy to carry around from one room to another. It was made so that I could set the (cheap plastic) Lite-Brite inside the wooden box, then set a sort of tray (also wooden, also made by Dad) on top that had slots on each end to store the little pegs. There was one slot per color so that they wouldn't get mixed up. I have always been kind of OCD about mixing colors. Ha! Anway, I remember feeling so loved that my Dad had taken all that time to make something special just for me! I will never forget it.

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  5. I think they were probably My Petite Ponies? Anyway, my favorite gift as a child was this Mickey Mouse duffel bag. It was just the coolest thing ever to take to slumber parties. Ah, the 80s...

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  6. A doll house. My parents built in wood, a doll house WITH a porch.

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