The Best Gift I Ever Gave

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Before I tell you what I consider to be “The Best Gift I Ever Gave”, I’m going to think about what makes a great gift. Hmmm, I suppose it has to be something that is uniquely special to the person receiving it.  Rosie is a huge Phineas and Ferb fan these days, and there is an episode when Candace has to find the perfect gift for her boyfriend Jeremy.

Candace describes the perfect gift like this.  It can’t be something anyone could have gotten him. “The perfect gift means that you totally get the other person in the most deep and paying-attention-y kind of way.”

The perfect gift is one that you chose because you know someone very well, you pay attention to things they like and to what will make them happy.  It’s a gift that was chosen with thought and love. It’s not what was on sale, or what YOU wanted, or is it?

Sean and I have been married for a long time now and have gone through different cycles of gift giving.  One of those cycles was the one where you give the person something that is really what you want. For example, one year I gave Sean a treadmill (he could care less, but I wanted one really bad).  Another year, Sean gave me a huge tv.  Hello?!  We know who THAT was for, hehehe.

We went through the cycle of only giving handmade gifts.  Yikes, that wasn’t pretty.  He made me a lamp.  I treasure it, but honestly ONLY because he made it.  If I saw it in a store, I would walk the other way.  The Year of the Handmade Gifts (as it is known in our family, we speak it in a hushed voice), I knit scarves.  I enjoyed making them and thinking about the person as I knit.  I used fuzzy, complicated kinds of yarn so you wouldn’t be able to see my stitches, and they turned out pretty!  At least I think so!

Okay, enough history and blah, blah, blah.  On to the BEST gift I ever gave. Go back…..way back….  to a Christmas about seven years ago.  I saw a special on television about a family that adopted a sibling group from a foreign country and how it changed their lives.  At the same time, someone I knew came home from the Ukraine with a new addition to their family.  It clicked with me….  we could adopt a child.  I had thought it impossible for several reasons, that’s another long story.  Sean had never even considered it.  He wasn’t 100% sure it was even something we should do.  But I talked to him that Christmas and persevered and two years and five sets of fingerprints later, we had Rosie.  Definitely, without a doubt, the best gift I ever gave.  (Don’t tell Sean, but it was another one of those ones that was something I really wanted, hehehe.  Do you think he knows?)

What’s the best gift you ever gave?

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Disclosure:  I wrote this post as part of the Clever Girls Collective campaign for $50 and a $50 Swagg Gift Code.

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