www.kathynick.com_presents

It is birthday week for me. Wahoooooo! And since Christmas shopping season is just around the corner (or, was around the corner in July. It is now at the threshold) I thought I’d list a few of my favorite birthday presents and why they stand out. Feel free to use it as a gift-buying guide on Black Friday. Or Christmas Eve. Whatever your style.

JoJo the Monkey – A black & yellow stuffed monkey with a banana in one hand. My brilliant parents presented him on my fifth birthday. I’m pretty sure I’ve never loved a gift more. He represented exotic adventure and mother-love all in one package.

A Ring Watch encrusted with rhinestones – Straight from the giant Wish Book to my pre-teen heart! This gift stands out because it was wildly extravagant and trendy. Trendy and extravagant were not things my farming parents could afford to be, and I knew it.

A Real Diamond – On my eighteenth birthday, my handsome future husband gave me an engagement ring. Yes, we were children. Yes, we were foolish. No, we would never suggest doing things the way we did them. But the romance and the ring have lasted forty years so far. I think we are onto something.

A Condo – Okay. It was actually just a small apartment in a near-by college town where our church and my husband’s job were located. We were spending hours of our life on the road, usually in separate cars. Wendell rented the condo as college housing for our daughter and a weekend place for us. He handed me the keys on my birthday, and I cried. Because what he’d really given me was time.

A Job – And, in that same spirit, he gave me a new job for my 50th birthday. Working for him. That may not have as much sizzle as a ring watch with rhinestones, but it was the fulfillment of a dream. On our first date as teenagers, Wendell had described the country medical practice he wanted to have someday. I signed on right there over a ham sandwich at the Pizza Hut. But it would be decades before I actually took my place.

Of course, the Dream Job is now the Day Job I keep trying to quit so I can write full time. Be prepared for that, shoppers. No matter what perfect gift you find, we are probably going to play with the box.

Happy Shopping!